AFMG Network Forum

adl · Member

Hello!

We have purchased the EASERA Gateway. Now we are planning to buy a new laptop in order to use it effectively for field measurements (Our test Dell Inspiron 8600 computer with a PCMCIA firewire card did not work very well with the gateway)

Now, what are your experiences with modern laptops and the gateway?
Are there any special laptop brands we should avoid? Any features, chipsets, functions etc. that are a must for professional functionality? (i.e. so we get no embarrasing lock-ups when clients are watching over our shoulders.. Shocked

)

Currently all laptops we can buy come pre-installed with Vista. Are the gateway and the EASERA software compatible with that OS, or must we track down someone who can sell us an older XP computer?

Regarding firewire, does it matter what port type the laptop has (4 pin or 6 pin) if we run the gateway using the external ac adaptor?

Also are there any CPU, RAM, graphics card issues? What are your suggestions for configurations? Does it matter if it's AMD or Intel?

Working setups would be very nice to have, you developers must have encountered a few setups that just work, right? Wink

Bruce · Member

Hello,

The PCMCIA card, was it a combo USB/FireWire or Firewire only? We have seen problems with the combo cards, but have always had good success with the FW only ones.

At this point XP is the preferred OS.

For power, even though there is a 6-pin port, there are no PC laptops that I know of that provide power to the 6-pin port. My preference is for the 6-pin connector, as it is a bit more durable than the 4-pin. So you have a need to provide external power to the Gateway in any case when used with a laptop.

We don't have a list of working setups, and I don't know that it is useful. For example, we have seen it work fine on one computer, and not work on another "identical" laptop. Apparently, even though they have the same model number, and appear to have exactly the same options, they are somehow different. It may well have been a different bios version, but that becomes very difficult to keep track of.