I've thought about the air-router approach, but probably 90% of my
mikrotik work is with MAC-Winbox, setting up new routers.
I just found the Acer Travelmate Spin B1. $330. Might pick one of
those up and see how it works.
On 5/21/2018 8:53 AM, Steve Jones wrote:
I paid 1500 for my Toshiba tecra (not toughbook) like 6 or 7 years
ago, it's been through he'll in the field, roofs, grain elevators,
rain, drops, left running in the bag and getting hot. It's on its 3rd
battery, fourth keyboard, but runs strong and never fails, even has
serial port. Price could have been less but I wanted the biggest
processor because at the time I was running multiple VMs.
Lenovo are decent, the antiglare is still visiblish in the sun. The
keys fall off and batteries don't last, Ether net is questionable, but
God only knows what the techs stuck into it or settings they jacked up.
Other than the need for wireshark occasionally, a cheap air router to
connect to the device with a ton of ip aliases has allowed me to do 99
percent from my phone now. Onedrive syncs our base config to dump in,
we can test, allocate and finalize a customers installation directly
from the top of their tower.
On Mon, May 21, 2018, 8:38 AM Nate Burke <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
The Netbook I've been using for a the last couple years bit the
dust on
an install last week. Acer Aspire E11. It was working fine one
minute,
then the Ethernet adapter was not detected by windows anymore. Of
course now-a-days nothing comes with a built in Ethernet adapter, I'd
really hate having to remember to carry an Ethernet dongle
everywhere.
Looking for a small form factor ~11" so I can throw it in a canvas
bag
for a hike out to a tower site. SSD and several-hour battery life
are
very nice as well.
It doesn't need any mighty CPU or Video, the only thing that it
does is
program Radios/Mikrotiks, and RDP into another machine.
The only new machines I've found so far that fits this bill are the
Lenovo Thinkpad line. It looks like a current gen 11" Thinkpad is
~$700. More than the $170 I paid for the Acer 5 years ago. I also
don't like that all the connections are on the sides of machines now,
instead of the back. When it's sitting on the truck console with
things
connected, that makes it a lot wider. The Thinkpads also specify
that
they have an 'Anti-glare' Screen. Would that make it easier or
harder
to see outside?
Is there a brand or Type that I missed? $700 for a field laptop is a
little more than I'd like to spend for something that has to survive
field work. Although the $170 unit has worked just fine in these
conditions for several years.
