I'm looking at craigslist, but I'm also wondering if there's somewhere else to look? I want to get Tunerpro going for the datalogging, but I need a laptop and don't want to spend more than $100 on it. Any ideas?

 

My IT department was dumping about half a dozen broken lappies two years ago. These were circa 2000 and still had RS-232 ports. Not ashamed to admit, but I went 'dumpster diving'. Out of four broken, nearly identical laps I was able to put together a relatively reliable machine (300MHz PII) running Win2K - I did had to buy new battery and more memory (384M total) to make it run well enough.
Look for second hand stores, electronic surplus sales, etc. - the key to getting a good deal is to negotiate.

//RF

 

Ok I get my laptops for dell.com so I can design my own and take out all the crap you don't need and upgrade what I do need. I am not sure but I believe the cheapest laptop they have is the Inspiron Mini 9 $349. there is alway the deals at mircocenter and best buy. I have to say that cheap is not the best with laptops. I'm not a fan of crislist or ebay laptops cause my brother goes the way of getting his laptops and i have to reinstall everything, turns into more then what you want and if your not good with computers then it even more of a pian

 

Is their not a resale shop in town that has used stuff? Issue on used is the battery life. A 12 V adapter to car is an option. Many do that. I might have one with a dead battery you can have for ship cost. Not sure if I recycled it??? It has Tunercat program (not TP) loaded on it with mask for $42(7747). Not sure what a 12V goes for? check Ebay.

I did not see above posts.

 

I have one that has everything you need, give me a call.
Don>>>

 

Don, PM sent!

 

usedlaptops.com can get a decent machine for an OK price.

 

While I sympathies with your goal, I'm not sure its the best choice. Making software compatible with Vista can mean it is not downward compatible with anything less than XP. For instance ScannerPro, which is the counter part to TunerPro RT is no longer compatible with anything less than XP. The features is ScannerPro will be implimented into TunerPro. I have no doubt when this happens, it will no longer be compatible with anything less than XP.

I would suggest going a different route. I chose to buy an Acer Aspire One, which has a 8.9" screen. You can ad a touch screen to it as well which even makes it more functional for use while driving. Mark (TunerPro author) uses one as well, so no doubt he will keep compatibility with it. 350 bucks + 20 for USB to Serial adaptor was money well spent.

 

My lappy new was $400 with vista. ended up paying $85 for XP pro to make it work for tuning. Good point above. Also nice to have a serial port but not necessary. I neeeded a parallel too so used a PCMIA card. That added some $$$.

 

I'm finding some really good inexpensive stuff on ebay. Hopefully will win one.

All I need is something that can run XP, has some decent speed, RAM, and memory, and a wireless network card.

 

okay i know this is gonna be out of your price range, but when i was looking for a laptop for school i went to best buy and what not and got to talking with a guy there... i ended getting a 14" HP with 120gb hard drive, 3gb of ram, hi def monitor, built in blu ray player, dvd/cd burner, intel 2ghz duo processor all for only $600.. best buy can have some really good deals if you look around