[Elecraft] suggested PC???

[Wes (N7WS)]

That's the way I see it. I have a Lenovo T400 laptop running Win 7 Home with a 
core 2 duo P8400 @2.2 GHz with 4 GB of RAM. I slapped in a 128G SSD and put the 
original HD in a caddy in the CD drive slot.  Runs everything, USB 
keyboard/mouse, SDR-IQ, K3S, DXBase, MMTTY, external monitor, etc.  Don't see 
what the fuss is about.

To run my SDR-Kits VNWA in the field I found an old HP Elitebook in a thrift 
store for $100.  It had Win 7 Pro installed and a good battery.  I went all out 
and put in a 256G SSD and reloaded 7 Pro.  It too will run everything.  After 
getting nagged enough by Microsoft I figured I'd try Win 10 on it.  Installed 
fine although the start menu was hosed (common problem apparently)   I don't 
care as I still run the 10 year old "Classic Menu" using Classic Shell.

(I can remember running a whole room full of HP test equipment with HP-IB and a 
HP9836 computer running HP Basic with 256 K of RAM, or in HP jargon, a "Quarter 
Pounder".  A 1 MB card was a "Big Mac" and required a Division manager's 
signature to buy)

On 1/5/2016 3:03 PM, Doug Person via Elecraft wrote:
> FTDI USB to serial adapters work on ALL platforms - without exception. There 
> simply is no reason to worry about "native" RS232 interfaces.
>
> An i7 to run a computer for a station is massive overkill.  I use an Intel i3 
> NUC (4"x4"x2") with an SSD drive and 8 gigs of ram. Everything runs just fine, 
> including dual monitors.  Unless you're planning on running an SDR, there 
> really isn't a lot of reason to have a lot of computing power for your station 
> computer.  Logging, computer control, digital modes and just about everything 
> else hardly even challenges the most basic computer platform today.