My old Pentium notebook running Windows XP had out lived its ability to serve my needs. It was originally my work computer from 2004 which I took with me when I left my company in 2005. It had become slow to the point where it was extremely frustrating to use all the latest memory and processor intensive versions of the applications I run. The time had come to get a new computer.
I did a bunch of investigation on Windows 7 and support for the radio programs such as Ham Radio Deluxe/DM780 and N1MM/MMTTY. I also considered desktops vs notebooks and decided A notebook would again be the best choice. My old computer supported PCMCIA cards so I had a dual port serial card I used for rug control and the CW/FSK interfaces. I didn’t see any new notebooks with PCMCIA card support and a few with ExpressCard support but very sketchy info on serial card support with them and Windows 7. I got a suggestion from a great fellow contestor in WA5ZUP and John suggested checking out Digi EdgePort units. On eBay there were many used units for sale and I picked up an 8 port unit for only $40. It has a list price of $455 if purchased in the Digi site! Even if it didn’t work, it wasn’t a lot of money lost.
Later last week I saw a good deal come up on Amazon. I was glad because I had about $240 in Amazon gift certificates waiting to be used on something. I ended up purchasing an Acer Aspire AS7740-6656 17″ notebook running the new Intel i5 chip with 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, N wifi, webcam, etc. It was $700 and with my gift certificates it came to $460 and I signed up for Amazon Prime so for $3 it was sent overnight and I had it Fri when I got home from work.
I was up until 3:30am working on removing the software I didn’t want and installing software like HRD, N1MM, MMTTY, etc. Then came the big moment where I plugged in the EdgePort/8 and took a deep breathe. Windows 7 found the unit and then automagically went to Windows Update and found the Windows 7 drivers for it. It installed and started to work perfectly! I ran a couple quick tests with N1MM and MMTTY and it was sending/receiving fine. Whew! Time to call it a night.
On Saturday and Sunday I participated in the Mexico RTTY contest on the new computer setup and it worked flawlessly. 213 contacts and not a glitch!
Moving from a 5+ year old Pentium notebook to this new Acer is a huge improvement. The speed at which things open and run is fantastic. No waiting and no frustration. Windows 7 seems to be solid and it is just me finding where things are in the new interface that takes a little time. At least for an experienced Windows user, Windows 7 seems very natural.
Thanks again to WA5ZUP for his suggestion on the EdgePort unit and I would recommend them to anyone needing serial port support with Windows 7. Kudos to the developers of Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM and MMTTY for building applications that run well on Windows 7 especially if you install outside of the \Program Files\ directory which is something all Windows 7 users need to be aware of.
Now comes the long task of pulling off relevant data from the old notebook and reinstalling programs on the new computer.
73,
K2DSL