laptop suitability
Hi
This from a computer novice. I'd been operating open vpms for my housecall practice from my laptop fine until the laptop died. Looking at getting a Lenovo thinkpad 11e . It's marketed as a rugged student computer. It has a relatively small processor -- Intel® Celeron® Processor N2930 (2M Cache, up to 2.16 GHz)
Just wondered if this would be sufficient to run open vpms on?
Cheers Steve
Re: laptop suitability
Dear Steve
Processing power is not as important as onboard memory for OPENVPMS - my advice is a much on board memory(RAM) as possible.
Look for atleast 4gb and I would aim for 8gb if your running 64 bit OS(which you should be)
Additionally consider your backup options. ie External harddrives or networking.
The base model for the one your looking at comes with 4gb which i think you can order custom up to 8gb - that should run a single instance of open under tomcat with 1 session. as well as Mysql and Openoffice ok.
Personally I would probably run on downgraded on windows 7 64 not 8.1, I think I will skip Windows 8 and go straight to 10
Ben
Re: laptop suitability
Thanks - appreciate it
Re: laptop suitability
Steve - I concur with Ben re the memory size - push it as high as you can. Lenovo as a brand - my son swears by his - I will try and get the model for you. [As you may know he operates a house call business and is hardly ever in the office.] However, in his case he accesses OpenVPMS running on a server at the office. You will be running OpenVPMS on your laptop. Hence laptop performance is not as critical to him as to you, but rugged dependability is critical to both of you.
Windows 7 or 8. I recently bought a new laptop which runs 8.1 and I have OpenVPMS happily running on it. However, I do run the Classic Shell program (see http://www.classicshell.net/ ) which makes 8.1 behave very like 7.
My philosphy with laptops is to buy the most expensive that one one can afford - on the basis that it should last a reasonable time and that it is nice to have it running as fast as possible. Hence big memory and the fastest possible disk.
Backup: again I agree with Ben - get a USB hard disk, and each night, when you plug the laptop into the charger, also plug in the USB hard disk and get a backup. If you need help setting up the backup so that it is automated, please yell.
Also, when you come to installing OpenVPMS on the new laptop, have a look at http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.8/topics/install - you will see that in the 1.8 release we have moved the installation instructions from the readme file to the web. We have also added a specific 'upgrade to a new machine' section which is the recipe you want. Note that although this is part of the 1.8 documention, the recipe also applies to 1.7
Regards, Tim G
Re: laptop suitability
Steve - I just heard from my son - he has an X200 and an X1 Carbon. Looking at the 11e, I would not buy it. I see it as a product aimed at the student/child market - ie selling points = rugged + cheap. I do not believe that it can easily be upgraded to 8GB.
If I was you I work go for one of the modern X series - see http://shopap.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/?menu-id=x_series
Note the 8GB memory, far greater battery life than the 11e, SSD disk. However, this comes at a cost.
Your choice.
Regards, Tim G