What are the minimal laptop requirements to run the Xede?
Which operating system will suffice or don't work?
How much RAM is necessary?

Will this be more than enough?
500Mhz PIII
64MB
Win98

I'm new at this so any recommendations are greatly appreciated.


TIA

 

yep...that sounds fine... FWIW the older laptops are a bit better for using with the xede as they are fitted with a serial port....Customers with newer computers use a USB to serial adapter which is more of a burden on the old wallet

 

also beware a lot of USB to serial adapters don't work at all (like the one I bought for $30). I've heard PCMCIA to RS232 adapters work but are much more pricey. Having a serial port on your laptop is by far the easiest route. I just borrow a buddies laptop since Xmap is a very small program and load the maps from there.

 

Thanks guys. I ended up finding a Thinkpad with built in serial port. All is working well.

 

Do you know where I can get one?

 

Decent brands for this kind of computer accessory (you might as well spend the money to get something that at least does what it's advertised to do and has some kind of mfr. support) are Belkin ( http://www.belkin.com ) and SIIG ( http://www.siig.com/ ).

I know that there are USB-to-serial adapters that do work fine, many of them using a chipset such as the FTDI one.

Product info on Belkin's USB<->RS-232 adapter: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...oduct_Id=20938

Product info on SIIG's USB<->RS-232 adapter: http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=10&pid=252

If you feel significantly better getting a PC Card<->RS-232 adapter, SIIG makes one: http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=10&pid=225

There are lots of places to buy these kinds of things online, and you can try putting the manufacturer's part number into PriceGrabber ( http://www.pricegrabber.com/ ). One company I've bought stuff from online/via phone that I've been satisfied with is CompuVest ( http://www.compuvest.com/ ) and I think they carry all three of the adapters I mentioned.

Oh yeah, assuming you are using some form of windows on the laptop, be sure to install the drivers for any of these adapters for them to work. Actually, you'd need drivers for any OS but people not using windows probably already know that anyway