Hello Amir,
I am working on a project with an outside robot
that has a pan-tilt-zoom cam, an omni-cam, and a laser. We tried a couple
of laptops in-field, and I can assure you that Apple products were the worst.
We tested with a fairly old 13" MacBook and a more recent 15" MacBook Pro.
The main problems were the number and proximity of the ports, the battery
life, the opening angle and viewing angle of the monitor, and the lack of some
keys (like Print Screen).
My current MacBook Pro has only 2 USB ports, but
they are so close to one another that I can really use only one. Thus, I must
attach a powered USB hub, which is problematic on the robot. I also noticed
recently that it has no serial port, and that our laser and robot's
micro-controller work with a serial port. My MacBook Pro also lacks a microphone
jack, which you may or may not need. I noticed also in field experiments that my
laptop does not open wide enough, and that the glossy screen make it unusable in
many situations.
What I would recommend, especially if you have the
budget for a MacBook Pro, is to look at Panasonic's Toughbook series. We tried 3
models for our project, and we loved them. One was too slow, but the others were
very fast and the batteries lasted forever. Just ensure that they have the right
ports for you, because some models are fairly limited.
Benoit Larochelle, B.Eng., M.Sc.
Software
Engineer
DFKI GmbH
Language Technology Lab
Campus D3
1, Room +1.12
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3
66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 10:06 AM
Subject: [ros-users] Selecting appropriate Laptop for
ROS
Dear all,
Sorry again for another general
question!
I want to buy a laptop to run ROS on our custom made robot
(which has 2 hokuyo LRF, 1 Xsens IMU, 1 Vedere STOC, 12 Devantech SRF08 UR and
an onboard 2 GHz Pentium M) for autonomous navigation/manipulation in rough
terrain. But, I'm not sure if I should buy Macbook Pro core i7 or something
else!
I'll appreciate it, if you advice me to choose the proper
one.
Regards,
Amir
============================
Amir Hossein Soltanzadeh
ME @
R&D Dep. in ISOP Int. Co.
RA @ Robotics lab in IAUCTB
Fax: +98 (21)
883 19 902
Tel: +98 (21) 888 10 817
Cel: +98 (912) 20 60 429
ICQ:
434884650
Skype: amirhst
email: amirhst@isop-co.com
web: www.isop-co.com
blog: amirhst.blogspot.com
============================
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