I’ve been working with alarms for close to eight years for two different firms and the laptop situation is always a source of frustration for me. Looking to maybe set up my own computer so I can stop losing my rag so often with old laptops. 

 

My current and previous employer have various old laptops with software on. Today I’ve been attempting to change a galaxy panel, like for like swap (keeps losing a node, they’ve tried everything up to this point so are seeing if a new panel fixes it) needed to use an old laptop cos it has a serial port, found the software was too old. Got the update on a disk cos the thing is so old it doesn’t recognise any USB sticks. But I can’t install the update because the OS is too old, so now I’m forced to program the new panel manually via the keypad! 

 

I’ve seen engineers from other firms with very new windows tablets and all the relevant USB leads for various fire and intruder panels and I’m jealous. I think there are some reasons why my employers choose to keep things old school but for many scenarios this surely isn’t necessary. I’ve heard - but never seen first hand - that USB to serial adapters don’t always work. 

 

What set set ups do you lot have? 

 

If it's only losing the node then it's not faulty... 

On the laptop issue, my old boss you to have quite a lot of old **** laptops, newest one was on XP but XP was great for panels ect.

 

im still well behind the times on W7 laptop Toshiba, got it because it has serial port, bit slow but always works. For a Email/browsing laptop it is awful 

You need to show the benefit of having a new laptop to your employer, if you can provide evidence for improvement in productivity the owners maybe more interested.

I rarely use a laptop for programming and my 10+ year old laptop still does the business when I need it to.

Bare in mind having to put in the donkey work if your current software will not work on the new lapy