You know, I bet that the best place to ask about a vendor to purchase a pre-installed Linux laptop with Labview would simply be National Instruments themselves. They might not sell it themself, but I bet they have a handle on their main customers and would have heard through support of who is selling something like this, even if they weren't told upfront when the licenses were purchased.
When you're getting into these kinds of prices, I think salespeople try to work with you to meet your needs. Good luck! Erik On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 5:09 PM Michael Christopher Robinson < mich...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > On Mon, 2019-05-27 at 14:04 -0700, Ben Koenig wrote: > > First, you can't upgrade the CPU on a laptop the way you expect. It > > is > > NOT a standard AM3+ socket. Check HP's documentation for that, I > > can't > > speak for their upgradeability. > > > > Second, you are grossly overthinking your question. > > > > I don't know what Labview is. So I take the following steps: > > > > Q: Does it support Linux? > > A: search duckduckgo for the terms "labview linux" > > > > found the following pages on the National Instruments website: > > > https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000kG1MSAU&l=en-US > > https://www.ni.com/download/labview-development-system-2017/6963/en/ > > > > Conclusion: Yes, what you are looking to do is possible in CentOS 7. > > > > Don't expect me to judge the quality of their installation process or > > provide any further advice, I'm not a labview user. > > > > -Ben > > Thank you Ben. A dual core AMD processor should be more than adequate > as a Pentium III seems to be sufficient looking at the National > Instruments how do I install Labview 2017 Linux documentation. > I don't think hardware acceleration is necessary for the graphics and > only 16 bit color is required (also in the National Instruments install > documentation). > > I'm still curious if any vendor sells a laptop or rackmount server made > for Linux and CentOS 7 with Labview 2017 Linux installed. It is going > to be expensive, Labview Linux is a $6k program apparently, but network > analyzers which labview works with aren't exactly cheap anyways. A > modern network analyzer from Keytronics is going to cost between $20k- > $60k running Windows 10 embedded. That seems atrocious, but the > product lines these analyzers support are generally significant money > makers. Amortized out over 4-5 years, an analyzer is part of the cost > of making these products. For making MRI equipment that plugs into MRI > machines, it has to be tuned properly. To give you an idea, keeping an > analyzer properly calibrated so that you can do RF tuning with it costs > $1000/year which is another cost of doing business. If a suite is a > $16k proposition for the company paying us to manufacture it, and we do > 3-4 hardware suites a quarter, the cost of doing business starts to > look more bearable. There are employees to pay as well as equipment to > buy in that $16k a suite. > > Spending $7k on the Linux laptop that runs Labview seems reasonable to > me. Still, I prefer to have a vendor put the laptop and Labview > together if it costs that much so that I can be confident the > laptop/rackmount server is well engineered for the task. It's the > hardware choices that really make a difference and how the hardware is > put together all the way down to how the processor is cooled. > Reliability and maintainability since this laptop/rackmount server is > going to be part of a production line means everything. Another thing > that matters, this needs to be a tightly controlled computer. This > computer should go into the production line to gather data from the > analyzer and stay in the production line without failing > for at least 1 year to 5 years. With Linux, you can be a server too > and provide a VPN gateway so that the network connecting the analyzer > to the computer can be completely isolated most of the time (this is > a controlled manufacturing environment). A dhcp server for the network > between analyzer and server/labview computer seems reasonable, but in > general the analyzers and server could be statically configured into an > RFC 1918 private subnet. > > Labview by the way is for automation of instruments and it is put out > by National Instruments. Think, the external labview equipped computer > can actually remote control an analyzer, gathering data from that > analyzer is one thing Labview should be able to do, but data gathering > is not everything Labview can do. Maybe Libreoffice Calc can pull said > data from a database into a spreadsheet that has the company logo on it > and then you print this form out and initial the readings taken for > traceability reasons. MRI paddles are medical grade equipment, so > there are special documentation requirements when you do the > manufacturing and other requirements as well. I'm trying to improve > the data gathering by having a computer collect the numbers instead of > having a physical human being try to read them off of a screen and hand > write them on the form. Do I need full blown labview to accomplish > this? I don't know for sure. The tuning is critical for this > equipment or it simply won't work where failed builds are an expensive > proposition that hurt my company's bottom line. The numbers that get > recorded need to be accurately recorded, no inverted digits or misread > digits. > > An AMD Athlon II by today's standards is obsolete and an HP G62 is > arguably junk at this point in time. I have a better laptop, but I > need to keep it for myself at home until I certify as a Javascript, > HTML5, and CSS3 coder and my personal data is on it. This G62 is my > old laptop from my college days qith zero personal data on it. My > employer should provide equipment, but I'm fairly new to the company > where the company is in the black, but barely in the black. I > don't want to rock the boat by asking for new equipment let alone Linux > equipment until I have the proper business case for it. I'll > experiment with Linux on Junk for now and hopefully figure out a case > for good Linux equipment including what good Linux equipment is. > Overkill is out of the question, so I say rackmount server very > lightly. Yes there is a rack and a server room, no that is not clearly > the direction we should go. Oh, and the old cloud is implemented on a > Linux server that is in the server room which nobody knows how to > maintain... the maintainer took another job and is hard to reach for > information on how to maintain it. But I am digressing, apologies for > that. > > Sorry for the long post, it's an awful lot to take in, but there is a > lot to think about if I'm going to actually make things better at this > company. Let me rephrase that, if I'm going to come up with a plan > that the owner can execute on to make things better at this company. > Come up with a good plan and convince the owner to follow it, not easy > considering that this plan will cost money. > > -- Michael C. Robinson > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
