Motec M4 which laptop?

[Marky]

Hi all
I'm looking at getting. A laptop to tune the and hook up to the M4. Have people had success with either the Dell 620 or 630? The recommended spec from Motec seems to be a struggle to tick all the box's with the graphics card and screen resolution, but I have found a few posts in America where people have used the Dell laptops even though they don't meet the criteria.
Any help would be great

Thanks Mark

[Stephen Dean]

Hi,

If you are just running the M4 Manager program, that laptop could be used. I have used one's with lower specs than that has (such as netbooks) without issues, other than speed and lack of storage.

[Marky]

Thanks Stephen I'll get a Dell 630 then. Also how do you get the full screen as the last time it was mapped we could only get a small screen and was hard to see everything that needed adjusting
Thanks Mark

[Stephen Dean]

Hi,

Getting a large enough window to be able to read the data correctly means that quite often you have to play around with the screen resolution and font size to get the window large enough. Some systems will allow for the DOS window that the M4 software works in to go full screen, and others won't.

[AdamW]

Thanks Stephen I'll get a Dell 630 then. Also how do you get the full screen as the last time it was mapped we could only get a small screen and was hard to see everything that needed adjusting
Thanks Mark

Alt+Enter switches it to full screen mode. Note I would suggest you choose a laptop with win XP as it draws the graph views correctly. Windows Vista or later you need to use dosbox or the std Low res vga driver to get graph view which just makes it more painful.

[Marky]

Thanks Adam I have just placed an order today for a Dell 630 with windows 7. Will this be ok as I think it's too late to amend and change to windows XP
Thanks

[stevieturbo]

Search this forum for "dosbox"

There are responses for both XP and W7

eg

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2642&p=11704

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2085&p=9939

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1152&p=9612

[Marky]

Superb thanks. After the response about preferably using ASAP, I emailed the guy and luckily he hadn't sent the laptop out and has said he will install windows XP instead of win 7. Should have the laptop on Wednesday so fingers crossed
Thanks

[stevieturbo]

XP probably more sensible all round

[greenamex2]

Has anybody tried XP or similar under VMware Workstation/Player?