Telescope Reviews: Requirements for a laptop for field use

Depends on what you are going to do with the laptop.

Most folks need something to handle charts - just about anything will handle PDFs

Planetarium software for finding objects - Carts du Ciel is one of the best and easiest on PC resources. Some of the other commercial packages will chew up a fair amount of horsepower (both CPU and graphics wise).

Observing list management can be useful - most of the apps here if they are separate from the
planetarium programs are very small and simple. There is however an increasing desire to be able to look up objects in real time, this obviously requires an Ethernet and/or wifi connection and a browser.

Scope control from the planetarium software is usually handled through a set of drivers like ASCOM or EQMOD - these use very little resources.

Camera control (image download and shutter control) is also a fairly light load, but the camera will use up a lot of USB2 bandwidth when downloading images and therefore also some more CPU resources. A way around this is if you are using a DSLR is to use a large memory card in the camera and only download the images at the end of an imaging session. One other area where camera control can become a resource hog is with the planetary webcam type of imagers that use the larger chips (1024x768) at fast (30+ frames per second). With this type of setup a laptop will start to require a fast disk (7200rpm) and much more CPU resources.

Autoguiding is an app that doesn't chew too many resources but needs to run without too many other things getting in the way. It's the closet thing most of us have to a real time application. Think of it as an imaging application (that downloads multiple times a second) and an app to analyze any changes between the images. Autoguiding apps will run on fairly limited laptops but they do like to have up to date items like USB2 (vs. 1.1) ports.

Image post processing - this is where most folks draw the line. A laptop would need to have lots and lots of horsepower (CPU, RAM, and graphics) to be able to handle the workload imposed on it by apps like Photoshop. This usually means that a laptop in the field is relegated to scope/camera control and image capture. Then another PC (usually a desktop at home) is used to handle the image post processing.

So can you get away with a laptop that's got a reasonable Celeron type of cpu and .5 to 1 GB ram? Sure, if you are careful in how it's setup (nice clean OS install and no unnecessary apps). You'll probably want a few USB2 ports (and not just one through a hub). Battery life can be an issue as well. A late model laptop with an extra large battery can run a scope for 3,4,5 or more hours. Anything that's been around for a while or is configured for the lightest possible weight will need to be plugged in almost immediately.

You can likely pick up a used XP based system with a reasonable CPU/RAM combo and graphics card for a good price but I'd also look at some of the latest new systems. When I was shopping for a laptop for my scope last year I also thought I'd go for a used system. I almost did until I saw the brand new Vostro laptops from Dell. I got exactly what I was looking for in a laptop (XP, Core2 CPU, 1GB RAM, graphics processor w/128MB, a display with extra vertical resolution, 4xUSB2 ports, big 120GB disk, extra battery capacity, wireless) for around $500. The extra $100 or so for the new system also removed any uncertainties about the system plus included a one year warranty ... to me it was well worth it.

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Mark

C11, C6, APM/TMB115, and AT80ED
Tandem mount CGE and CG-5A, WO EZ-Touch and AT Voyager
25x100s, 8x56s, T-Mount Light, and Mark 1 eyeballs
Modded 350D, SPC900, Mallincam