CLanford
Member
Hi everyone.
I am starting out on my own and am searching for the best laptop to use for my newly formed controls business. I've been doing industrial controls for a while, but it's always been with company laptops.
I told myself that when I struck out on my own, I'd go with a VM set up for all of my software and licensing so I wouldnt be suffering from the "golden laptop" syndrome. I could just clone the VM and spin it up on another machine if something ever happened on my physical machine.
I have a few questions pertaining to this endeavor:
1) What's the best laptop thats durable for factory use and still has enough physical ports to work with lots of peripheral devices? It seems that native ethernet ports are disappearing on newer machines, and even USB A ports are going the way of the dodo. With so much stuff out there that still uses serial, I need a good serial to USB adapter as most of the reliable ones are only USB type A to serial.
2) What are your thoughts on the best VM software to use? I'll need to be able to pass through all of that physical IO easily, including the USB to serial.
3) Any ideas on good cloning software for the laptop? My thoughts are that since I'll have the VM, I'll have its image stored on a backup SSD to dump onto another machine if needed. But some software may not be VM compatible so I may need to install directly on the PC. Hence the potential need to clone and recover quickly. Any suggestions for software here?
Thanks for your insight!
I am starting out on my own and am searching for the best laptop to use for my newly formed controls business. I've been doing industrial controls for a while, but it's always been with company laptops.
I told myself that when I struck out on my own, I'd go with a VM set up for all of my software and licensing so I wouldnt be suffering from the "golden laptop" syndrome. I could just clone the VM and spin it up on another machine if something ever happened on my physical machine.
I have a few questions pertaining to this endeavor:
1) What's the best laptop thats durable for factory use and still has enough physical ports to work with lots of peripheral devices? It seems that native ethernet ports are disappearing on newer machines, and even USB A ports are going the way of the dodo. With so much stuff out there that still uses serial, I need a good serial to USB adapter as most of the reliable ones are only USB type A to serial.
2) What are your thoughts on the best VM software to use? I'll need to be able to pass through all of that physical IO easily, including the USB to serial.
3) Any ideas on good cloning software for the laptop? My thoughts are that since I'll have the VM, I'll have its image stored on a backup SSD to dump onto another machine if needed. But some software may not be VM compatible so I may need to install directly on the PC. Hence the potential need to clone and recover quickly. Any suggestions for software here?
Thanks for your insight!