Acer Aspire Netbook for Open CPN

[witblits]

Hi all, Looking at buying a new Acer Aspire Netbook 11.6" to run open cpn on one of our tugboats. The netbook has a 1ghz processor and 2 gb of ram and is running windows 8. We have a Furuno GP32 already hooked up on the boat with a serial to USB adapter already in place. Is this Netbook going to be adequate for running Open Cpn? Will windows 8 be compatible and will we be able to use our current serial to USB 232 cable? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks Mark

[nohal]

Mark...
Which USB-Serial cable it is exactly? It is known that some older cables don't (and won't) have drivers for Windows 8 - especially those using Prolific chips and their Chinese almost-Prolific copies are a nightmare to get working properly even on older Windows versions. OpenCPN itself should run just fine on this config, but I would personally save those few bucks for a Windows 8 license to buy a few beers...

Pavel

[witblits]

Thanks Pavel! Ya i'm really not too stoked on the whole W8 thing but it appears that is all that's available with that particular model. The cable is an Aten UC232A serial to USB

M

[nohal]

Mark...
According to A problem with Aten UC232A serial converter in windows 8 - Microsoft Community the cable could or could not work - if you are tech savy enough, read that thread and check the chip version. If not and don't have someone around, be prepared to buy another cable.

Pavel

[witblits]

Thanks Pavel. Guess it could never be easy and straight forward could it! I'll see what I can learn when I head down to the boat in the morning.