I'm an undergrad systems engineering student, and I'm picking out a laptop or tablet for my capstone project. The computer will sit on top of a mobile robot that drives outside over a grassy field, an environment which affects the parameters of what I'm looking for. This robot has been worked on as a capstone for the last two years, and the current laptop on the machine is an ancient piece of junk (slow, battery hardly works, bad screen, etc)
Criteria for what I'm looking for in a laptop or tablet :
1 Has at least 3 USB ports, (the more the better)
2 Great battery life
3 Fast
- this computer will be processing digital images coming through a streaming video (frame-by-frame), so I'm looking for serious processing power and lots of RAM.
4 As readable as possible in direct sunlight (anti-glare screen?)
5 "Semi-rugged" to prevent damage to the hard drive when bounced a little. "Full-rugged" would be overkill.
Bonus items:
• Current one seems too big and heavy (ancient laptop, like I said) and our group would like to go smaller. However a netbook size screen would be so small as to be annoying since we'll often be adjusting our code and checking GUI's.
• Back-Lit keyboard.
• Touch screen might be handy. Tablet style that folds flat could be nice.
The budget is $2000-2100. Any help would be appreciated!
Criteria for what I'm looking for in a laptop or tablet :
1 Has at least 3 USB ports, (the more the better)
2 Great battery life
3 Fast
- this computer will be processing digital images coming through a streaming video (frame-by-frame), so I'm looking for serious processing power and lots of RAM.
4 As readable as possible in direct sunlight (anti-glare screen?)
5 "Semi-rugged" to prevent damage to the hard drive when bounced a little. "Full-rugged" would be overkill.
Bonus items:
• Current one seems too big and heavy (ancient laptop, like I said) and our group would like to go smaller. However a netbook size screen would be so small as to be annoying since we'll often be adjusting our code and checking GUI's.
• Back-Lit keyboard.
• Touch screen might be handy. Tablet style that folds flat could be nice.
The budget is $2000-2100. Any help would be appreciated!
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