netbooks for logging

[Seight-v8]

hello all,

struggling with logging with my laptop.....its great in the garage....but a real pain while driving...

Just been looking at some dell minis......they run windows xp...and have solid state hard drives...

Should be good for running while logging...

also they have usb ports....so should connect to the vems ok

just wondered if anyone had one, or is using one, and if they are ok.

cheers

scott

[Sprocket]

The problem with a 'netbook' is it is likely to have minimal Memory, and if it runs Vista or 7 a fair chunk of the memory (usualy half) of the advertised is used for the operating system. Thatr is not to say the netbook is useless, but at least make sure you can add more memory if you need to. Other thing to consider is battery life, some have up to 14hrs while others only 2hrs, and that also depends on how the netbook is used. A 2hr battery life while logging will likely only be 1hr at most. The Dell brand is good and is pretty much guaranteed to work with most drivers available. I certainly have not had any issues with a Dell D600 or D630 with either Vemstune or Megatune, but these do have a 232 serial port.

I know this was not quite what you were asking for, but I just thought i'd make you aware. I spent some time looking at all the netbook options for the wife, with battery life and memory a priority.

[Seight-v8]

was just going to buy a 2nd hand one from ebay.....with windows xp, as it doesnt need to be owt flash.

But they are only 9-10ins screens and just wondered if you can still get all the gauges to display properly...

only problem is with my current 17ins laptop....is that i cant take any passengers when driving & logging...as my laptop takes up the whole seat, as its a westfield it aint that big, with no where else to place my laptop.

and i thought that rough roads might eventually knack the hard drive, due to hard suspension and constant bumps...

Wanting to do some long trips....and my current battery on my dell M90 only lasts for just over 1hr while logging.

only other option would be to fit the SD card for logging in the ecu.

scott

[GuilhermeBuonfiglio]

I'm very happy with my Asus EeePC 1005PE Netbook.
It's advertised as "up to 14h" battery life but 6 to 7h of real usage with VemsTune logging on my setup (still very good).

The keyboard is very good. In car, it is connect to a original Asus Power Supply. Very small and light.

I had a very hard time trying to make Prolific USB drivers working on Windows 7 and I gave up totally.
Now I'm using:

• Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition 32 bit

        USB-Serial appears as /dev/serial/by-id/usb-4348_USB-SER_-if00-port0

• Windows XP guest running under VirtualBox (very clean install. I've setup 224MB of RAM for it)

        COM1 is mapped to /dev/serial/by-id/usb-4348_USB-SER_-if00-port0 (VirtualBox feature)

The performance is surprisingly good and l have never experienced any problems with it. I have a spare Windows XP guest under VirtualBox just in case something goes wrong with the main guest. I also make a Snapshot every time I upgrade or install something. IMHO maintainability in this scenario is the best possible.

The display is 1024x600 and I did some configurations to maximize VemsTune display area.
Basically I use XP in Full Screen mode. The ?task bar? is configured to not stay on top. The ?theme? is set to "Windows Classic" and everything that could make it smaller was done. Smaller fonts, buttons, menu text, window area text, etc...
With this changes, only a few default views had to be edited to display properly, and only small changes.

I've just started playing with GPS on the Windows guest. I already have a Qstarz 818X 5Hz connect to Linux on /dev/ttyACM0 and I'd like to map it as a serial device for the Windows guest. Not done yet, but it looks like pipes is the way to go.

Windows 7 is still installed, but I don't boot it for at least 2 months. As soon I need more space I will delete it.

[]s,
Guilherme[/list]

[rob@vems.co.uk]

I've heard talk of Virtual Box or VMWare player being used to run XP on Win 7, if you look at Microsoft's VirtualPC page you'll see that some of the higher spec versions of 7 have an XP Virtual machine.

[lezsi]

I'm using an eee 900 for tuning/logging more than a year by now, and very satisfied.
Solid state disks don't care the car resonance, $1(!) chinese 12V charger is very small and working fine (it's actually a wire + a led in the plug).

Since it's a cheap an old 900mhz machine, I'm running XP, with classic theme, every bells and whistles disabled.
Almost every application needs full screen, but 1024x600 is usable this way.

I bought a long serial cable that puts the usb/rs-232 converter far away from car electronics, which solved almost all of previous freeze/disconnection problems.

One suggestion: use some protection of the laptop when leaving it alone in a gutted racing car, because it can easily break plastic parts off.
I've even cracked the internals of one of the USB ports 

[Seight-v8]

thanks for all the input....

looks like this is the best option when wanting to make logs, or small changes in the car.

Looks like it's ebay for me...the next few days.

cheers

scott