Chasing Tech: Choosing A Chase Laptop

Figured I would continue on with my “Chasing Stuff” blogs with a series of blogs on Chasing Technology.

This Week…
Choosing A Chase Laptop

One thing people have a misconception about with what you NEED for chasing is a killer insane laptop.   One of my cardinal rules in chasing is never take anything you are not afraid to loose.
Danny Neal lost some of the functions on his brand new top-of-the-line Toshiba laptop this year when a door was left open and was hit with some insane RFD rain.
I broke a Firewire port off a brand new HP a couple years ago in a cramped vehicle.

Fact is you don’t need to have a 17in monitor and all the bells and whistles for a chase laptop.

What you need is something reliable and durable, I loved chasing with my 4yr old Dell D610 until it bit the dust this season.

A note on Netbooks and why I am not going to talk about them:
Unless you are on an extreme budget I would stear clear of the “Netbook”.
I know you can pick them up for $200-250 however most use the Intel onboard graphics accelerator, this will provide an UGLY rendering on GR3 and resolution so low you will find yourself scrolling all over the place.   It’s not going to fit in a laptop mount and would be completely worthless for in the field video editing for breaking news if you do that kind of stuff.

Hard Drive Space:
This is your chase laptop, even editing some video 80GB is more than enough for what you will need on a chase.

Are SSD Drives that have no moving parts and are more reliable?:
I have tried this twice now with 2 different brands in 2 different models of laptops.
Each time some strange event such as a power fluctuation or temperature change caused a crash that left the hard drive corrupted, I would stick with the old and reliable standard hard drive.

Memory:
The cheapest way to get the most bang for your buck is Memory, put as much in as it will handle.   Keep in mind anything over 3GB in a WindowsXP (or 32bit OS) machine will go to waste.
Use a site like www.crucial.com to find the model you need, then buy from www.amazon.com or www.newegg.com for the best price.

Firewire:
Most modern camcorders (Flash or HDD based) will not stream out the firewire port anymore and only use the port for file transfers, USB 2.0 is just as fast and common on all newer laptops.   Don’t go out of your way to find a laptop with Firewire another costly mistake unless you absolutely need it.   You can also find Firewire to PCMCIA or Express port cards for around $20.

Screen Resolution:
I love more real estate and a higher resolution screen will make a ton of difference… I’m not talking about screen size but how small it can make things on the screen…
Talking about older laptops which may have a maximum resolution of 1024×768 vs 1400×1050 on a higher end line.
What makes this nice is on programs like GR3 it will leave more real estate for the radar image as opposed to the information bar on the right that is mostly worthless.

Streaming:
All the streaming sites use Flash Media Encoder or Windows Media Encoder.   Unless you use some plugins to overlay stuff on your stream you don’t need a special laptop to stream with.

12V Power Supplies:
Some of the higher end laptops such as Dell’s Lattitude series have an option for a 12v power supply that plugs into a cigarette lighter.
These things in my opinion are completely worthless.
The power they supply is only enough to either power the laptop or charge the battery, never both at the same time.
Don’t waste your money on this feature.

The Lighted Keyboard:
The pinnacle of a great chase laptop but your gonna have to drop some cash to get it, they don’t come standard on the low end laptops.  You can find really cool USB lights like this http://bit.ly/gSTFwu for a couple bucks that will do the trick.

USB Ports:
Your going to want a bunch of these as many as possible, but you can always buy a “Hub” but it’s one more point of failure.
Things you will need a USB port for…

• Wireless Internet Card
• GPS Puck
• Streaming Camera
• Keyboard Light

So what do I recommend?
Well I mentioned having 2 laptops at one point… I personally don’t think you can look at your laptop to do everything you want.
You are really trying to accomplish 2 completely different things and unless you want to make a DVD in North Platte, NE you don’t need a massive video editing machine on the road.
Any modern laptop with a decent amount of memory is going to be able to edit a clip of breaking news video or a youtube video.

What you NEED is a durable, dependable and disposable laptop that if it gets filled with water you wont loose sleep over.

• For a chase laptop I would reccomend anything for under $500 with the following specs…
• Make sure it does not have an Intel Integrated Grapics accelerator or Intel graphics.  If you buy a machine with an AMD processor it will more than likely have ATI graphics it will do.
• A Pentium 4 2.0ghz or better processor.  No Celeron or Duron processors, can’t beleive they still make these!
• As much memory as it can handle, just shove it in there don’t worry if it’s not already there… it’s cheap.  Keep in mind there are 2 slots, both are more than likely already in use so you will need to buy what you WANT to have not add to what is already in there.
• WindowsXP… look it’s old but compatible with EVERYTHING there will be no right clicking and running as Admin… all the software is just going to work.  You can’t buy a NEW laptop with XP, if you want to downgrade make sure there are drivers for XP for your model!
• If possible avoid the glossy screen, sure it’s pretty but it reflects and shows dust like no other.
• A good site for used stuff is www.pcsurplusonline.com as of this writing there were a couple sub $150 machines I would chase with.

Well that is my take on chase laptops…
If you have any questions or want to ask if XYZ is a good laptop feel free to put it in the comments or email me at scott@endlessweather.com

Next Week:
Using Gpsgate to make all your apps work and reporting postion to SpotterNetwork without the SN client.

About the author:  Scott is a technology professional working in the industry for over 15 years.