Equipment Reviews:
Review of the Acer ASPIRE ONE net book computer. Aug. 23, 2009
By Chris Morrow, Low Country Stargazers
I bought this computer to run my telescope mount, an Atlas GEM goto mount, and help with my attempts at astro photography. I took a chance buying this net book not knowing if it would run Cartes du Ciel, PHD guiding and the Meade driver for my DSI camera.
My telescope setup, Meade 10” LX200R, Astro Tech 66 mm APO, William Optics two speed crayford focuser, 2” diagonal Meade DSI camera (not shown in picture) and a unmodified Canon Digital Rebel XT.
The mount is from Orion telescope and has been modified with a new counter weight shaft that I made and is 1” in diameter, 18” long and made from 303 stainless steel (click on link to see shaft). An ADM Losmandy style adapter was added to allow mounting the telescope and eliminate flexure in this system.
The Acer ASPIRE ONE net book:
The net book I bought from Wal-Mart has 1 GB of memory and is expandable to 2 GB of memory. I was uneasy of the processing power of this net book and the ability to install software needed to run and guide the mount. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to find everything needed on the Internet. The net book has ample storage with a 160 GB hard drive and came with Windows XP Home installed. The software that was running for first light was, Cartes du Ciel, ASCOM drivers for the mount, PHD Guiding, and the driver for my Meade DSI camera.
There are only 3 USB ports on the computer and I needed 4 ports to run everything, so I added a Belkin 4 port powered USB hub. The cable to run the mount is the stock serial cable attached to a USB to serial converter connected to the USB hub. The Meade DSI camera is connected to the USB hub with its supplied cable, the power for the camera was supplied by the powered hub. The last item to be connected was the GPUSB adapter from Shoestring Astronomy, power for this was also supplied by the powered hub.
The computer operated perfectly from 7:30 p.m. till 12:30 a.m. nonstop. After 5 hours of use the battery power meter indicated the computer still had 4.75 hours of power left. I can find no faults with this computer as it performed very well while running all the software at the same time.
OPT 40 mm Super Plossl from OPT
Jim E. tried the OPT 40 mm Super Plossl from OPT (the club received 2 free...thanks OPT). The view was very clear and sharp. He noticed no blurring at the edges nor did he notice any aberrations. He would recommend it to anyone looking for a good 40mm eyepiece.