When looking for laptops, I made sure each of the choices had at least 1 serial port (more than 1 is hard to come by in a laptop) and 1 USB port. My thought was that 1 USB port can be attached to a USB hub and then USB->serial adapters can be used to give us as many serial ports as we need. I also think a 56K modem and 10/100 network card are important. Here I have presented three laptops – 2 used and 1 new. The new laptop was priced out at DELL.COM and the used laptops are currently offered by APLAPTOPS.COM. I have purchased from both companies in the past and have been satisfied with their service and support.
Option 1: Used IBM Thinkpad 380ED
IBM ThinkPad with 12.1" Active Color Screen. All-in-one design (floppy. cd and battery built in) Nice basic machine for school or basic office operations. This unit includes a fast 56K modem and a 10/100 Ethernet card for high speed internet. Batteries are included but not warrantied. 30 Day warranty. Base Price: $349.00
Option 2: Used IBM Thinkpad 390X
Excellent PIII processor and active matrix screen. Plenty of Ram and you can upgrade it to 256. Both the floppy drive and the DVD drive are built in at the same time (no swapping). S-Video port allows you to play DVD on your TV and it plays very well on the laptop. These computers came with a new battery. Computer is off lease and comes with a 90 day warranty. Base Price: $699.00
I also found a 12V car cigarette-lighter style power cord for this laptop for $89 here.
Option 3: New Dell Inspiron 4100
A mid-level laptop with standard options and features priced out to $1348 + tax + shipping.
12V DC Cigarette Lighter Adapter: $99
This laptop can be completely customized and tweaked – different processors, more or less RAM, different size displays, different video cards, etc, etc. This example is configured with mid-range options.
My Comments on the 3 Laptops
Option 1 would be an adequate laptop for this project. Then again, pulling GPS figures off of one serial port and sending them somewhere doesn’t take a lot of horsepower. If anyone were to use this laptop for any other purposes like presentations, etc., they would be struggling. This laptop only has 32MB of RAM and doesn’t have any sort of ‘nice’ video out to plug it in to a projector or TV. Additionally, the battery is almost guaranteed shot. Although I’m not sure about whether or not this laptop would be used for things other than this project, Dr. McVey indicated today that it would be nice for the department to have a laptop to take to conventions for presentations, etc. I would not recommend this laptop for that use.
Option 2 is a nice laptop, not too fancy, and a great price. The Pentium 3 processor and 128MB RAM would support Word Processing / Presentation / Internet Surfing activities, and the 128MB could be expanded to 256MB for a small amount. This laptop features S-Video output for plugging in to a projector or TV and has a 90-day warranty vs. 30 days for the first one. Also, the battery is Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and is said to be new.
Option 3 is a brand-new laptop with a 3 year warranty and a larger screen than the first two. It is considerably faster than the first two and has much more hard drive space. It also has S-Video out for presentations.