LabVIEW
Tired of Dell\HP\etc!
Just to comment on the Dell Precision 390. If you do get one of these and expect to use all of the PCI slots you are mistaken. The PCI slot that is on the bottom will not hold any NI card nor any other for that matter because the bay for the extra hard drive is right in the way. If you do not need the extra drive then you can take it out with some brute force.
Just my two cents on that style of Dell
My hand is up, with an agreement about the pricing model, re: components readily available (memory, HD) priced closer to the rest of industry. As to USB-serial converters, I've used quite a few with mixed results. If the baud rate is moderate to low the seem to work reasonably well, but as you get to higher rates or require critical flow control they start behaving badly. As to using an FPGA card, well considering the cost of development, cost of the board, uniqueness (can only be replaced with an identical solution at $1.2K + plus) not sure how wide spread a solution that would be. I've been suffering the difficulty of finding reasonable machines with the required functionality, and finding them with WinXP is even harder. Microsoft is telling those suppliers that currently provide Xp as an alternative to Vista that they must cease as of January 31st. It is getting harder and harder to try and configure a system for a customer that will be supportable on the long term. As to "factory support", in a regular "desktop" computer (vs a laptop), what needs factory support past the regular warantee period. Most of the hardware failures usually occur pretty soon after purchase, and on a desktop everything else should be able to be acquired at your local computer store (power supplies, memory, etc.) faster than sending them back. As to phone support, well my experience over the last 15 years hasn't been very positive.
As to "advances in technology", eliminating serial ports, etc., are more for cost savings, allowing the manufacturers to sell computer systems for $300 now. Admittedly, the average user probably doesn't know what a serial port is, much less care that they haven't one. When I asked in my last iteration of laptops a couple of years ago whether any came with a serial port, the salesman looked at me like I was asking whether they came with buggy whips, "why would you need one!!". I explained that I still had to connect to various instruments, some legacy, some new that had serial ports. Then the look changed to him trying to tell which solar system I had come from. Try and find a machine with floppy drives! Understand that I love USB for many things, have half a dozen "thumb drives", a portable 250gB HD, NI USB-DAQ card, etc., but wish that there was a way to have actual ports, rather than "adapters", when I'm trying to develop in environments where timing may be critical.
As to "advances in technology", eliminating serial ports, etc., are more for cost savings, allowing the manufacturers to sell computer systems for $300 now. Admittedly, the average user probably doesn't know what a serial port is, much less care that they haven't one. When I asked in my last iteration of laptops a couple of years ago whether any came with a serial port, the salesman looked at me like I was asking whether they came with buggy whips, "why would you need one!!". I explained that I still had to connect to various instruments, some legacy, some new that had serial ports. Then the look changed to him trying to tell which solar system I had come from. Try and find a machine with floppy drives! Understand that I love USB for many things, have half a dozen "thumb drives", a portable 250gB HD, NI USB-DAQ card, etc., but wish that there was a way to have actual ports, rather than "adapters", when I'm trying to develop in environments where timing may be critical.
Message Edited by LV_Pro on 10-23-2007 10:33 AM
