The one I’m currently using is a behemoth 17" Dell gaming laptop that slurps down its internal battery in just over an hour, even when you throttle down the afterburners. It has a 250W power supply.
It also won’t let me set the keyboard backlight to red, even though it does a rainbow display during bootup that proves the hardware is capable. I’ve been all through the settings and into the bios, but Dell doesn’t seem to have exposed this option to the consumer.
In short, this laptop isn’t ideal to run in the dark and on a battery.
I have built a 60Ah 12V power supply for remote imaging sessions, so it would be helpful if it has a 12V adapter available. Dell has a 90W 12V cigarette lighter adapter for their lower power laptops, if i could just find one with a red keyboard backlight.
I’m hoping for something <=90W, with the ability to give a low red keyboard backlight, and preferably a 10-key numeric pad.
It should have multiple fast USB 3.0 ports for cameras, hard drives, etc.
Good processing power would be great, but image processing can be done at home where I can plug in.
Budget isn’t unlimited, but not a big constraint. Say a target of ~$1500 or less, but would consider spending more if warranted.
I suppose I should also open up to other suggestions…
At one point, I was thinking about building a raspberry pi imaging computer, but it looks like the project that supports that hasn’t been maintained in a while.
At that time, I was considering using a tablet to wirelessly connect to the pi via remote desktop.
So, I’m definitely open to other creative suggestions that don’t fit my specific criteria stated above.
I’m curious how other imagers in the club handle this.
Hi there,
My laptop has a red keyboard and seems to do okay on battery. Currently using an EcoFlow RIVER Plus Portable Power Station and I can run my whole system overnight with it.
Yeah, I had it for awhile now, but if it ain’t broke… LoL
Dell is a decent brand for businesses, but personal experience is very lack luster. But I haven’t dealt with them in probably 10 years on their personal laptops. On the business side, hard to beat for warranty work.
Hello Brent! I am a relatively new member too. If battery life is more important than the red keyboard backlight, the latest MacBook Airs (with Apple Silicon such as the M1-M3) have incredible battery life with great performance. Of course, I am not sure what software you need. The value is better than expected from an Apple product.
Building a Raspberry Pi astro rig is on my list of fun projects if I ever get time!
The problem I’ve run into with Apple products, as good as they are, is you are limited by software available for them that is otherwise readily available for the PC world. There is of course stuff out there, but NINA for example only runs on a PC.
One suggestion would be to buy one of the many mini pcs and set that up with your scope, and then remote into it. For around $200 you can pickup a nice lower power fanless PC with Windows 11 pro loaded. Once set up you can remote into this with any device you want, including Apple devices, and you aren’t tethered to your rig as a bonus. Cuiv the lazy geek recently did a video on the Mele boxes running the N100 chip. You can also get that in an N200 flavor, and of course,e there are a slew of other options.
I recently setup one of my Nucs (similar to the above power wise) for my 2nd rig and it’s fantastic. You can wifi to it from a distance and it works good with my iPad. I do find native Windows to Windows connection to be the best but I really haven’t had any serious issues with either Apple or Android devices using the Remote Desktop app.
An alternative to a PC or Laptop would be to get a Stellarmate. It has everything you need already loaded and you can access it by an app from your choice of device. My iPad usually outlasts me when using that setup.
None of these are laptop suggestions I realize, but with some options perhaps you might not need a new laptop.