Laptop requirements?

[old man emu]

Be careful using a laptop to run a 3D printer. Without going into the nuts and bolts of it, laptops often send information to your printer in fits and starts, which means that your printer will stop and start.

If you have the money to go out and purchase another laptop, I'd suggest that you buy yourself a 2nd hand desktop with a small monitor. Programs which run the printer, such as Pronterface, don't need very much computing poer at all. The only real need you have for computing power is to operate your slicing software. You can do your slicing on your good laptop then carry the file over to your printer desktop using an SD card or USB stick. Doing it this way does not take up much room, and you won't have the hassle of having to unplug you laptop everytime you want to use it for other things.

Here's what my workplace looks like:

My workspace.jpg

You can see an old tower in the corner. I can't remember its specs, but I've had it for years and years. It will run Rhino 4 (CAD) including RhinoCam, and Mach3 (a CNC operating software). The only reason I have the smaller desktop operating my printer is that my son (an IT guru) decided that it did not suit the corporate image he want to portray, so he built me a new desktop for the office.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. An XT format computer works faster than I can type.

Old Man Emu