This is topic Laptops for field engineers in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-12-2000, 03:08 PM:
Well my back up laptop finally died (both were Toshiba Satelites) and I am just wondering what every one else is useing and the pro's and cons they have discovered
I am interested in the Panasonic with the magnesium case
Compatability with the R2 the UltraStereo light meter, SDDS and CinemaACoustic processors is also a consideration
Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 02-12-2000, 07:59 PM:
I've got a UMAX Actionbook which just sort of Ok. Mediocre is more like it.Regal cinemas gave their techs in the northwest all AST laptops with external floppies and external cd rom drives.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-13-2000, 01:08 AM:
I have been wondering about buying this e-Machine, e-Slate. It is supposed to be the first good $1,000 laptop. I am including the link so you can look at the specs. If anyone has an opinion, please chime in.
http://www.e4me.com/infocentral/product_eslate400k.html
Posted by Stefan Scholz (Member # 147) on 02-13-2000, 11:14 AM:
In my tech work in cinema and cellphone industry, I am currently a Dell Lattitude laptop. This was chosen from cellphone Corp.'s hHQ, as ithas a very good 14.5" display, and in comparison to most other brand was extremely solid, even though it does not look like this.
They even made drop and smash tests with full Hard Drive activity, and thery kept on going.
The delivered BIOS and Windows system was total crap and had to be redone before actual usage. But I think this applies to any computer bought offshelf
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-13-2000, 12:17 PM:
I deal with laptops all the time at work (mostly fixing problems with them). My general feeling is that all laptops suck, but some suck less than others.
We're currently buying IBM 600E laptops, which are pretty decent and are about the only laptops that I've seen that will actually run WinNT reasonably well (amazingly, it is much easier to get Linux to run happily on laptops than NT!). The IBM laptops aren't the greatest and they certainly are expensive, but they generally seem to play nicely with NT and require relatively little support. As for the others: Toshibas used to be decent, but I've not had good experiences with them recently. Some of the NEC laptops are decent, but they generally don't like NT very much (which may or may not be an issue for you). Not sure about Dell, although I hear that they're "just OK."
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-13-2000, 02:02 PM:
Of os on my laptop I usually partition it for 4 operating systems
PC DOS
WIN98
OS2 Warp4
Linux
The 2 toshibas had no problem with any of them they just were not that reliable
especially after the Xray machines at airports
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 02-13-2000, 04:03 PM:
Godon,
You may want to consider looking into the Dell Latitude line, these are business end computers, the higher end ones come with a 15" screen. Dell has been rated highly for sometime for the abuse that their laptops can take. I've worked with these for sometime, and have found them to be VERY reliable.
Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 02-13-2000, 05:38 PM:
I'm looking into laptops for my hobby of CCD astronomy, and after surveying a fairly large user group the consensus of opinion was Toshiba for bullet proofness and cold weather capability and general reliability. First choice actually was IBM, but they're way to expensive, which tipped the scales in favor of Toshiba.
Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 02-13-2000, 10:41 PM:
Scott, I asked the computer gurus at the office and they had no real response, so I will ask you; Why do you want NT on a laptop? I had a Thinkpad with win95 on it and I loved it. They decided to give me a new computer with NT and it seems to have some problems.
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-14-2000, 10:38 AM:
Many companies (like Kodak) use a Windows NT platform, with Lotus Notes. So that's what our laptops are configured for. I'm using an IBM 760XL ThinkPad that's showing its age and is really slow by today's standards.Larger corporate IT departments keep close control of what's configured and what software is installed (it makes their job easier, and avoids conficting, buggy, or virus-infected software), which can be limiting. New versions of software take months to approve, since they don't want to have to deal with early bugs.
------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Professional Motion Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-14-2000, 04:54 PM:
Gord, I have had no problems with my Toshiba 435cds. I've had it now, I think, for almost 4 years and have yet to have problem 1. Even the battery is still chugging along...although it does not have the capacity that it used to. I bought mine based on reliability reports from Lucasfilm. They were all using the same Toshiba notebooks. Of course by todays standards its a dinosaur, but then it does always work and I like the fact that the HD is shock mounted in sorbethane. Why not see what the guys at Lucasfilm are using these days as they travel extensively. BTW: I also use this Toshiba for alot of other lighting programs as well and its never even hickupped.
Mark
Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 02-14-2000, 07:54 PM:
Gord,
I have a gateway solo 2550, with a pentium III, 6gig and a ton of ram. No problems at all, and I put it through the mill with graphics software. Nicest thing is the IR port and how my DC265 digital camera downloads without a cord. Thing with Gateway is the great support. For what it's worth.
Lance
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-15-2000, 08:38 AM:
John pretty much said it; we won't run anything less than WinNT here. From an administrative point of view, support costs go way down when users have an OS that is slightly more stable than Win9x, is significantly less insecure than Win9x, and which makes it much more difficult for users to screw themselves. <grin>
For these reasons, the only machines that we'll connect to the network here are running WinNT, Linux, or Solaris.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 02-16-2000, 02:54 PM:
Well I suppose this post may be a little bit pre-mature. But now there is a BETTER of the 2 worlds.... Windows 2000. Which has many benefits for the user of Win98, the stability of WinNT (and then some). And...... its VERY laptop friendly. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but they did a good job with this new OS.
Posted by Ari Nordström (Member # 288) on 02-17-2000, 04:09 PM:
>>"Well I suppose this post may be a little bit pre-mature. But now there is a BETTER of the 2 worlds.... Windows 2000."<<I've run Win2000 beta on my Asus laptop for about six months now, without any other problems than a known hibernation mode bug. I use the laptop for field operations, and the combination Asus/Win2000 works just fine for me.
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 09-07-2001, 09:39 AM:
Sorry to drag this up again, but what speed laptop do you think will be required for theater servicing in the near future?Right now, I have an 166mhz processor. Do you think that will still be OK for the next few years? It seems that all the "real" processing is done in the R2, CP500, QSC monitor or whatever. So I'm beginning to think I don't need anything faster. (It's all bottle-necked through a RS232 line.) Besides, now I can get good, feature-loaded cheap 166mhz processor laptops off of e-bay! I'm thinking of upgrading for features, not speed.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 09-07-2001, 09:21 PM:
A 166 Pentitum seems to be just fine for now.I am still using a 486/50 for most of the theatre servicing issues....it has been just fine up until running WinDras on a CP-650...that was the first time that it's speed was not adequate...It is still just fine for tuning the CP-650 though!
Steve
------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 09-07-2001, 10:14 PM:
I am useing a IBM thinkpad 365 P 133 and it hasn't crashed
I find that some of the faster laptops seem to have more problems with the R2 on communications errors my HP palmtop which is a 8086 processor never has a problem with the r2
Posted by Jon Bartow (Member # 241) on 09-08-2001, 11:37 AM:
I'm using a AMD K6-2 380Mhz laptop. Never had any problems with any of the software. (the exeption being when I forget to boot in dos mode and try to run the R2 under windows. 
)
Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-08-2001, 12:57 PM:
My wife brought home a review of laptops from "Government Computer News" (she works in a city planning department) which picked the Dell Lattitude C800 as best pick. Specially good were the graphics speed and some other speed tests. It uses a PIII 800 and ran 50% faster on bench mark scores than the competition. The review was dated 8/27/01------------------
Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
Posted by Don Sneed (Member # 955) on 09-10-2001, 01:31 AM:
Hey Gordon, I use a Panasonic CF-72 toughbook, no problem with the R-2, Dolby CP-500,CP-650,DA-20, SDDS (DFP-2000 & DFP-3000) , DTS-6AD, & Ultra-Stereo DSP-60, I live in Galeston Texas, but service the theaters in Guam, Japan, and the USA. I love this laptop, it has been the best, I had three other Dells that only lasted a year or so...plus it is a tough machine...hopes this helps
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 09-10-2001, 07:02 PM:
I am happy with the old thinkpad beats the hell out of the Toshibas
The only problem is the panasonics don't support some of the OS2 drivers and that is my base operating system
Posted by Stefan Scholz (Member # 147) on 09-11-2001, 01:08 PM:
I haverecently learned that Power Books by Mac with virtualPC do work quite well. And seem to be more reliable than my Dell notebook with Win 95. Did anybody try Mac? Does it work with the r2, as this normally requires a pure DOS machine.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-12-2001, 03:48 PM:
I'm seriously considering whether or not I should ditch this damn WinSmell laptop I'm stuck with but I have to run the DSP-60 and SDDS setup software among other things. My question is how to get the RS-232/serial cable to hook up to a P.B. and how Virtual PC handles serial cable communication.The other thing is if or how I can find an application that'll connect to a CC:Mail server. That is the e-mail client I am stuck with.