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Thread: Tuning Equipment - Laptops!

  1. #1
    RIP EagleMark's Avatar
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    Tuning Equipment - Laptops!

    We've never really talked about a piece of equipment we all need for tuning? Just the cables from to hardware needed, software, drivers and installations.

    So I figured a thread on laptops. All this tuning software does not need much. My first was so old and slow it's hardly get on the internet but used WinALDL and TunerPro just fine. 400mhz? Like 256 mb of ram? Need a little more then that today.

    I've had a high end HP entertainment/desktop replacement type Laptop for about 4 years now. Spent a ton on it back then just before I built this website and literally wore a grove into the mouse touchpad, along with wearing out a wireless mouse and several keys are worn so bad you can't see the letters. The hard drive has overheated several times because of the incoming cooling air vent on bottom, when I set it on the seat of a vehicle it just does not get enough air. Well it finally died and I replaced the hard drive and now it's in retirement on my desk hooked to a 32 inch HD TV, wireless keyboard and mouse, nety work cables and wireless network.

    The portable replacement is a Panisonic Toughbook CF-74 I found on eBay, lots of them out there cheap but most are beat up and lots of hours. HArdly any come with a hard drive. I found this one with 510 hours on it, not a scratch, hard drive removed for $157 shipped! Installed a 128GBB SSD hard drive $100, 4GB ram $32 got a charger $15 and original windows 98 pro install disk, manufactures version for the machine with all drivers etc for $25.

    Unbelievable machine for 2006 and was a later version with 2.0ghz Intel duo core, touchscreen, wireless, network, modem, SD slot, PC card slots, bluetooth, serial, USB, anti glare screen, etc... Original retail was $3499.
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    Fuel Injected! JeepsAndGuns's Avatar
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    Nice score on that one.
    I have a hand-me-down laptop given to me by my sister when she bought a new one. It was right before I was getting into tuning and knew I would need one. She bought a new one and I asked if I could have her old one. Nothing is wrong with it and it still works great. Its a dell inspiron 1100. I have no idea exactly how old it is, or how big the HDD is, but it works great for what I use it for, which is tuning. It runs windows XP. Only thing I have had to do to it was add some more memory. Once it got service pack 3, it was uber slow, I bought a 1 gig stick from newegg.com and its back to working great. Tuning my jeep is the only thing I use it for, I will get on the internet with it every now and then when I need to up/download files to or from this site. Other than that, it sets on the desk turned off.

    Pros: price, it was free! Works great, no problems with it.
    Cons: only 2 usb ports and no serial port. Batteries are getting older and only last a hour or two.

    Mark, you mentioned about the air inlet on the bottom of yours and not getting air flow when on a seat. I have a thin angled seat cushon I bought that fits the angle of a seat real good to make a level spot, then put a thin peice of wood board (I think it was actually the backing for a large picture frame) on top of the cushon to give a flat hard surface for the laptop to set on. That way it sets level in the seat, and has good air flow for cooling.
    79 Jeep Cherokee, AMC 401, T-18 manual trans, hydroboost, 16197427 MPFI system---the toy

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    my tuning laptop is also my only laptop....

    bought in early 2008, Acer 5720Z(1.6GHz pentium D, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD). WAY overkill for just tuning, i use it for nearly everything but hardcore gaming and video editing. for that, the desktop i built for my wife does much better.

    i never really expected it to last this long, let alone without too many problems. had to replace the speakers, and i'm kind of rough on the power cable, replaced it 3 times now... the back casing is falling apart though.

    EDIT: and according to SMART data, this hard drive has been powered on for 852 days, 13 hours.... if that's any indication of how much it's been used.
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    Fuel Injected! 1BadAction's Avatar
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    I have a ACER 5738PG. Touchscreen is nice for vehicle use but the screen is a shiny glare monster. It's my only computer besides my tablet and phone.

    That toughbook was a helluva buy, Mark. I need to pick up a couple of those, one for tuning and one for my buddy and his alldata diagnostic stuff.
    94 Blazer, Turbo'd 350 TBI - DD
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    Quote Originally Posted by JeepsAndGuns View Post
    Mark, you mentioned about the air inlet on the bottom of yours and not getting air flow when on a seat. I have a thin angled seat cushon I bought that fits the angle of a seat real good to make a level spot, then put a thin peice of wood board (I think it was actually the backing for a large picture frame) on top of the cushon to give a flat hard surface for the laptop to set on. That way it sets level in the seat, and has good air flow for cooling.
    The new Toughbook has no vents on bottom! On one side and the SSD hard drive runs much cooler so all cooling is for processor.

    The SSD uses much less power to. Battery is original and it gets 6 hours!

    1990 Chevy Suburban 5.7L Auto ECM 1227747 $42!
    1998 Chevy Silverado 5.7L Vortec 0411 Swap to RoadRunner!
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    I use one of the smaller HP laptops. For an burner I have a Conitec GALEP5 - it programs not only EPROMs but also all of the GALs and single-chip micros that I use for my other projects.
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    MSN netbook (Win XP) , Dell E5500 widescreen laptop (Windows 7) , and an older Toshiba Satellite laptop (Win XP) are the three main machines I use in my vehicles . All running TPv5 and all connected to one of 4 APU1's .

    I have a few older laptops with Win98 on them I used to use floating around , havent used (or seen) them in a while ..........

    TOM
    Last edited by Nasty-Z; 04-22-2013 at 09:50 PM.
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    After my custom built PC died a couple of years ago my wife and I decided to go with a laptop only. I no longer had the time to play on flight simulator which was the only game I played on a PC so I didn't have a need for a high-end PC anymore because any other gaming I do is on the playstation. We initially bought just one laptop to share, but that lasted about as long as it took for me to find a good deal on a used one. Nowadays, we have 2 identical laptops and 2 tablets. I absolutely hate tablets so I live on my laptop and it goes where I go. I even have a charger for all of my common situations now so I can keep it charged and surf indefinitely. I have one permanently plugged in downstairs in the living room next to my lazy boy, one on my side of the bed, and one in my carrying case that I put my laptop in anytime I step out of the house. Mine has the typical bottom mounted cooling vent that gets obstructed anytime it is sitting flat on any surface, but I always left it in the carrying case with the lid just flipped up while datalogging my hour-plus commute to and from my last job. By the time I got home it would be pretty hot, but it has never had any issues as of yet. The same goes for the previous laptop that only got replaced because we upgraded. My current laptop is an HP G61-631NR with an AMD Athlon II Dual-Core M300 2.0ghz processor, 4gb of RAM(upgraded from 3gb), and a 320gb hard drive that runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition. It's got 3 usb ports, an HDMI out, multimedia card reader, ethernet, modem, and VGA port as far as connections go. I don't think I've ever owned a laptop that had a serial port, but they've all been HP entertainment laptops. Of course, it doesn't hurt that my wife works for Aaron's so we get a good deal on some electronics. We got our surrent laptops for nearly nothing because they both had keyboard issues from having something spilled on them. I fixed mine by simply cleaning it, but hers needed a replacement. Anyhow, my laptop obviously doesn't have any problems with tuning and whatnot but the battery life is pretty short. If I keep the performance settings turned up it will last about an hour. I can stretch that a little by switching to power saver, but it maybe lasts another half hour. That's the drawback of having an entertainment oriented laptop, but all I do is surf the web and tune with it so the battery life isn't a big deal to me. The carrying case I have is a pretty serious case and if I remember the retail on it was like $75, but I stole it from the wife so it was free to me lol. It is a pretty nice Targus case with lots of protection and lots of compartments. It easily holds the laptop which is a "larger" model with a 15.6" screen along with my charger, Moates ALDU1, Moates Burn 1, extra chips and memcals, usb and hdmi cables, and still has LOTS of room to spare.
    Last edited by pmkls1; 04-22-2013 at 10:31 PM.
    1999 GMC Sierra 1500 standard cab long bed 4.8 V8 2WD - A work in progress.
    2000 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 - My new daily driver inherited from the wife via the insurance company totaling it out after a minor collision.
    2006 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 Supercharged - The wife's new grocery getter.

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    I've had goof luck with this old, well only 3-4 years, HP 17 inch screen laptop. Pretty tough as it has hit the dash board, then floor three times in panic stops... Guess it's tough? Man I cringe when that happens and always wanted something cheap and tough for in vehicle use.

    1990 Chevy Suburban 5.7L Auto ECM 1227747 $42!
    1998 Chevy Silverado 5.7L Vortec 0411 Swap to RoadRunner!
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  10. #10
    Super Moderator Six_Shooter's Avatar
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    I've had several tuning laptops, most of them have been Lenovos. Lenovos are about the only laptop I have found that was "affordable" and would take a beating. I've had a T30, R61i, and one other Lenovo, all have worked great, until they died, or retired. My T30 just up and died on me one night when I was working on it, suspect MoBo issues. Replaced it with my R61i, which has lasted me about 5 years or so. It still works, but had to replace the fan recently. Battery life sucks on it though.

    I have another laptop that my Grandfather is using currently, that I think is a Dell, that I plan to make into a dedicated tuning laptop, since battery life is great, and it was free. It can only run XP, not enough power to run Win7. :/

    I also have my Samsung that I got for school, that has tuning software installed, but is supposed to be for school only.

    So I have more laptops than I need, but the only ones worth selling are not really worth selling, too old, or too many problems.

    I also have two of my Girlfriends old laptops that I might be able to get up and running again, well at least the one. Summer break I will spend some time on them and see if I can salvage them. Maybe install one permanently in my car. lol
    The man who says something is impossible, is usually interrupted by the man doing it.

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    I've seriously thought about a semi-permanent car mounted laptop in my firebird before, but that was when I swore I would never get into OBD II tuning. I didn't think about anything crazy, just building some sort of mounting system and hard-wiring a power inverter and charging cord. I also had several laptops laying around at one time, but they were all in good condition so I sold the older ones cuz I needed the money and I can upgrade easily just about any time. Every time newer models come in at my wife's work they clear out the "older" models so we can get those cheap. For example, they now carry windows 8 laptops so we could have bought any remaining windows 7 models for near nothing. Then, there are the returned units that aren't worth fixing like the ones we have now. Unfortunately, it isn't like that with just any product that they sell, just some. Anyway, I have always been partial to HP products because they are sold just about everywhere so it isn't hard to find parts and accessoriess. I have also always had good luck with their products too. I like their printers and liked their cameras until they quit making them. In fact my printer is an HP and so is my nice camera as well as one of my wife's tablets.
    1999 GMC Sierra 1500 standard cab long bed 4.8 V8 2WD - A work in progress.
    2000 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 - My new daily driver inherited from the wife via the insurance company totaling it out after a minor collision.
    2006 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 Supercharged - The wife's new grocery getter.

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    If you look around at reviews you'll find Lenovo always very high and seems they always compare to HP. Then look for consumer reviews and again Lenovo always ranks high.

    With the exception of my HP laptop I've never owned a new computer, all my stuff is pawn shop, thrift store or eBay... my old desktop I built from left over parts from fixing and upgrading other peoples PCs, had it about 10 years, keep changing or adding, has all my old hard drives in it. Networked to my $3 ethernet box and for monitor has a $10 18 inch flat screen monitor mounted on an adjustable arm hanging off my shelf above my desk.

    My 32 inch TV/Monitor off my HP was $40 from a freind at pawn shop when it was returned, some of the gaming cable plugs did not work.
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    1990 Chevy Suburban 5.7L Auto ECM 1227747 $42!
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    Fuel Injected! 1BadAction's Avatar
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    Mark, with as much tuning as you do, have you ever thought about an adjustable vehicle mount?
    94 Blazer, Turbo'd 350 TBI - DD
    1991 2500 Suburban Adventure truck - 4wd conversion, 4-link F/R, 582ci CNP Big Block with Terminator X EFI backed by a 6L90 and twin stick'd NP205 t-case
    2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo - Date night car :)
    1979 16' Action Marine/"Johnny Cash" Merc Bridgeport Champ Motor - Metalflake Maniac

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    I never bought a new laptop or pc until a couple years ago when we went to laptops. We actually needed to have some sort of computer for a few different reasons so when the desktop went kaput we needed to get something quickly. We went ahead and bought a new one through the wife's work because they didn't have any used ones at the time. Every laptop since then was used, but not very old. The wife did buy the last tablet new, but that was done without my knowledge of course.

    I built all of my desktops before that and they were built with mostly new or refurbished components save for the archaic monitor that I always reused for some reason . I've never had an excess of money, though, so I had a method of building them and also shopped around. There are several places to shop around and get good deals like ebay, geeks.com, tiger direct, etc. I would build a decent system and then upgrade it as money permitted until it was time to build a new one. I began with a decent new case, a big power supply, the latest cd/dvd burner, and a fairly high-end mobo. I would then get a reasonably priced processor that was about the smallest the mobo would support, a fair amount of memory, a mid-level video card, and a high-end sound card since they were cheap. Hard drives were reused until they either broke or got full, but I always had 3 in the computer so the second and third drives were units that had been a primary drive until they got too small. Once they came out, I bought a nice wireless keyboard and mouse and reused them until something broke. Network cards were pretty standard and I just got whatever until they started integrating them into the mobos that I used.
    1999 GMC Sierra 1500 standard cab long bed 4.8 V8 2WD - A work in progress.
    2000 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 - My new daily driver inherited from the wife via the insurance company totaling it out after a minor collision.
    2006 Grand Prix GT sedan 3800 Supercharged - The wife's new grocery getter.

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    Quote Originally Posted by 1BadAction View Post
    Mark, with as much tuning as you do, have you ever thought about an adjustable vehicle mount?
    I have thought about it... but since I almost died once tuning and driving I have a strict rule of not doing both! Click record, drive, park, stop, watch, adjust, upload, record, drive... rinse and repeat. I drive up and down freeway and get on/off every ramp.

    1990 Chevy Suburban 5.7L Auto ECM 1227747 $42!
    1998 Chevy Silverado 5.7L Vortec 0411 Swap to RoadRunner!
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