new Laptop to use as DS/Development

FIRST General Forum
1

Hi looking to buy a new laptop to use as DS for this year and use it as development machine in the future. are there any restrictions of what i can use as DS in the competition?

any suggestions? Thinking of going with win8

2

I would be careful with windows 8 this year. FIRST has not tested the DS with win 8 so use it at your own risk

3

if I go with win7, does it have to be professional or is home premium ok

4

Home Premium will work. You wanna steer clear of the netbooks and classmates. They lack the processing power for Kinect systems. A good route to go is an Ultrabook. We’re using one from the HP lineup. Just make sure that the battery life is good.

Macs running Windows work pretty well as I’ve seen so if you go that route you ought to be fine as well.

5

I haven’t had any issues using Windows 8 with the driver station etc. so far, however I do agree that you should play it safe and stay with 7. I did need to put the D-Link configuration tool in compatibility mode to work properly.

Note: If you get a computer with Windows 8 Professional, it comes with downgrade rights to Windows 7 and the ability to go back to 8 at any time. If Pro is an option, the preinstalled OS doesn’t need to be a factor in your decision.

6

DS works just fine in Windows 8…sure, it might not be officially supported, but I’ve seen no reason yet to doubt its reliability.

7

For the future, I am sure windows 8 will be certified by the next year of competition, and your classmate can back you up if you run into any unforeseen issues. For the hardware itself, stay away from Ultrabooks and Netbooks for a development computer. You never know if you will get another year with a cd for software installs, and the specs on traditional laptops will last your team longer. I am a fan of Lenovo because their frames let them take a beating(I love my team, but I have also seen them try to carry a laptop).

8

Our team decided to drop the classmate. We now use a MacBook Pro running bootcamp. It has been reliable. Luckily we didn’t buy it but are “borrowing it.”

Specs:
Intel I7 2.9 Ghz Dual Core
8 GB DDR3 RAM
750 GB Hard Drive
Windows 7 Bootcamp

Plus it looks good with our driver station :slight_smile: