[Proposal] Buy 3 of these laptops to replenish our laptops

[Ryan Mcdermott]

We used to have a stack of laptops that people could use for programming arduino when they came into the lab.

Here are the machines I propose we buy 3 of: http://www.amazon.com/X401A-BCL0705Y-Ultrabook-Notebook-1-8GHz-Processor/dp/B00GJ1CFZ2/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1394560725&sr=1-1&keywords=Laptop

The total cost for this will be: $898.80

Here is the goal of this proposal:

Provide 3 machines with the following installed:

-Recent version of Windows

-Recent Arduino IDE

-Support for USBTinyISP

-Reboot Restore Rx[1] to provide a "steady state" that the machines will always return to upon reboot

-Recent raspberry pi images that may be deployed to the raspberry pis that the lab has

-Putty

Things that these machines will NOT be for:

-Browsing the internet

-Playing games

-Design work (we have machines for this)

Love,

Ryan

[1]:http://www.horizondatasys.com/en/products_and_solutions.aspx?ProductId=18

[Eric Ose]

Thanks Ryan. I support this. Often we have people who show up without their laptops or just plain don't have one.

-Eric Ose
Robot Ambassador

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[Chad Stearns]

In the proposals current state, I would vote a respecting nay.

0. What laptops are good for

The value from designated lab computers (that I see), including the past arduino dedicated laptops, is that they equip Heatsync with everything necessary to do an area of work. This is different from the value being that this equipment is used extensively, just that its available to be used. Having public use laptops in the lab is like a contingency plan for unusual events where people dont have their own laptop with them.

Are we not prepared for those unusual events? The audio/video, and 3D printing computers have the arduino IDE on them, and Ive seen them be used for Arduino stuff. I guess I could see the sense in buying a single designated arduino laptop, but not three.

1. Avoiding junk

I especially think we should be hesitant to buy more laptops, since our last laptops all eventually disappeared, or became junk. Would ~$800 spent every two years be worth it for us?

2. Hearing from Jacob

I am interested to hear from Jacob, since he is the microcontroller station head. Arduino laptops are naturally associated with his station

-Chad

[Jacob Rosenthal]

I've mentioned several times that microcontrollers and soldering as I manage them have nothing to do with commodity laptops, monitors, mice, keyboards, etc. Because the of the Pis and to a lesser extent the arduinos I keep getting that stuff dumped on me to the point theres a huge pile of it now, but again I'm not offering to be in charge of any of that.

Eric has offered to in the past, and I take this as part of that offer, to manage laptops and I support that.

As to the old laptops, none of them "disappeared". We had a set of 3-4 donated laptops from an Intel event we were part of at Gangplank many years ago. All of those devices were out of warranty and had massive failure rates. We have several failed units in drawers somewhere still I'm sure.

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[Chad Stearns]

Thanks for all the clarification Jacob.

-Chad

[Eric Ose]

I posted in the incorrect thread;

"I'd like to be able to do workshops for using design tools on these laptops. It sounds like that is expressly forbidden. Is there possibly a way to dual boot with one OS that is fixed and one people can hack on? I don't have enough of an IT background to know if that's possible."

Ryan's response was there is a computer near the laser for that.

I won't support this proposal. There appears to be absolute restriction on anything not listed as permitted in the original post. Most of what people could use these for would fall outside of that domain. This can be re-proposed to not be so restrictive and I would vote for it in a couple weeks.

-Eric Ose

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Hey Eric,

The "restriction" was meant to be an explanation of why they were so low powered.  They're low power, and cheap.  I mean that they're probably not well suited to doing design work.

They're not for: design work

was meant to pre-emptively answer any questions about their power.

It was poorly worded.  Tabling it until another HYH is fine with me, I'll word it better that time.

Sorry about that.

-Ryan

[Ryan Mcdermott]

BTW, if it matters: the computer I'm talking about in the back is what was used for the (I think it was) blender workshop that happened around a year ago.  I think that worked out well for that purpose.

Would you mind checking out the recommended system specs of whatever design program you are looking to use and posting them?  I'll see if I can find some machines that will fulfill that requirement (so you can do a workshop) but still fulfill my intended purpose: to facilitate people who want to do arduino and don't have a computer (somebody came in with exactly this problem today, btw.  She ended up using the 3D printing computer).