Will a Netbook work with a Propeller?

ElectricAye

Yesterday I saw somebody using a Netbook (cost ~ $200) to work with his telescope and, though he grumbled that it was kinda slow, I was impressed by its size and cost. Does anyone know if such netbooks will interface well with Propellers? My normal laptop often glitches when I download software simply because of time delays caused by background tasks (antivirus software, etc.) so I was wondering if netbooks, if they are indeed slower, might have chronic issues of that sort or suffer some other problems.

Anyone have experience with these little critters?

thanks,
Mark

potatohead

I've a co-worker that owns one of the newer netbooks. IMHO, it would do nicely! Not sure that loading the Prop makes sense with a movie playing, or a ton of applications running, but the Propeller Tool, maybe a graphics program and your browser should work just fine.

If it were me, I would load the Prop Tool onto a USB stick, walk down to a place that has them for show, plug in a board and check it out.

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kwinn

A netbook usually runs a version of Linux, although I have seen some with XP. I have seen the propeller tool working on an XP netbook. BradC has a tool for Linux that may work on the Linux versions. See http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&p=023&m=298620

Forrest

Shouldn't be a problem - most of the newer Netbooks have a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM and run Windows XP just fine. I suggest switching to an antivirus program that doesn't steal too many CPU cycles - such as ClamWin.

virtuPIC

I have plugged my prop demo board to an Asus EEEPC 70x most of the time and use bstc.linux for compiling SPIN / PASM. Works great!

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Robot Freak

I've got the Acer Aspire One, A150. Great notebook, 160Gb harddrive, 1Gb ram, Atom 270.
It has a 1024x600 screen, in my opinion the smallest workable resolution. (most software and webpages need the 1024 width to avoid the annoying horizontal scrolling)
My experience is that every non-3D (games, modelling software) works just fine.
The specifications actually are those of a mid-market pc 2 years ago.

BradC

I use and test bst on an Acer aspire one with a 1024x600 screen and limited ram and CPU. So, yes.. a netbook works. If you can shoehorn XP on there you could use the propeller tool..

I know of two people who use is on an Eee 70x also.

Mine has about 6GB of very slow SSD and 512MB of ram.

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"VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!

Rayman

I have a now old Asus 4G surf that I really had to work to get XP on due to tiny SSD, but I used it all the time.

Now, I have a Samsung NC10 with 160 GB hard disk that makes things much easier.

Coley

I too use a Samsung NC10, it now means I take my computer to my project to load code rather than the other way round

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Jim Fouch

I have an Asus EeePc 901 with Windows XP on it and it works great. That was one of the main reasons I bought the netbook. I do alot of motorcycle projects and was looking for a small laptop. The nice thing with the 901 is it is all solid state, so there are no moving parts. No spinning HD to damage on a otorcycle going down the road and hitting bumps.

With a small netbook I can tweak my Propeller gadgets while on the road and don't have to lug around my normal 12+ lbs laptop. The Netbooks are more like 2-3 lbs.

Just took a 700 mile bike trip and took the netbook along and it was really nice. I have Verizon and was able to get internet on the side of the road to send emails back to the wife.

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Jim Fouch

FOUCH SOFTWARE

Jimmy W.

if you are worried if it will be fast enough then you can install a "Lite" version of windows xp install, unattended, with all the junk you never used removed you can also integrate all the drivers for the netbook into the install then make a bootable USB drive, HP has a very compatible 1gb stick thats $3!, I recently did an ultra stripped windows XP install for a HTPC and the install disk before drivers was 107mb, after drivers was 300 mb (darn video card drivers) and it only uses 36mb of ram when windows is just idling. it also boots silly fast.

www.nliteos.com/

ElectricAye

Thanks to everyone for your inputs on this. This is encouraging news, especially about stripping down the operating system.

cheers to all,
Mark