Tech laptop

[ccitechpatrick]

Hey guys,

I'm in the market for a new laptop and am wondering if anyone has any suggestions. One thing that is very important to me is that it has a serial port.

Thanks in advance.

[lundah]

A built-in serial port is next to impossible to find any more, and not really needed since you can buy a USB serial adapter for about $10. I picked up a refurbished HP 6910P from Newegg about 6 months ago, works well enough for what I do with it, which is mostly maintaining older 3300's and the associated accessories. I'm even able to run IMAT and use Folio Viewer to pull up my old documentation CD's in XP Mode on it.

[x-man]

I run (free) VMWare Player with XP and IE6 on it to access older 3300's and it works well and as lundah says usb to serial works well for accessing the maintenance port on newer ones if you need it, just don't buy a cheap and cheerful one as they can cause trouble using a cheapo chipset. I use a keyspan unit and have yet to find anything that doesn't work (don't use it a huge amount though).

[NTEDave]

Second hand Dell D630 with maxed RAM and an SSD 

[acejavelin]

We use the HP Elitebook, from Earthbend you can get a decent 15.6" model (we have been using the 8570p, then upgrading the RAM to 8GB with a 4GB stick from Newegg) for about $850 and it has really good performance, a built in serial port, and Windows 7 Professional. To save a few bucks you can go with a HP Probook but to get a good USB serial adapter (like the Edgeport/1 from Digi http://www.digi.com/products/model?mid=207) the cost is almost better to go to an Elitebook right out of the gate. I highly recommend them, spill resistant keyboard, aluminum frame, easy access to mainboard, and good battery life, this is our standard issue for techs and I haven't found anything close for the money.