Topic: Running the lightning detector and display software on a multi-use computer?

[DaleReid]

The manual says the ideal is to run the display software and the lightning detector on it's own dedicated computer.

That's what I'm doing currently, but during the summer the box is on the whole time, along with the space it takes up and the extra keyboard, monitor, etc.

I also have Weather display gathering info from my weather station and have toyed with the idea of taking the Boltek and putting it in that same computer.  The TaskManager doesn't show that all the cpu cycles are being used up.

Have others done this and then back tracked because of problems such as slowness duirng heavy storm tracking, or unexpected and unexplained system hangs?  Or do 3 Gig 2 Core machines running XP SP3 have enough guts to help me gain some desk space back and cut down a little bit on running multiple computers, one for each function?

I'm looking for thoughts and possible pitfalls I've not seen yet.

Thanks.

[SLOweather]

I'm running the Boltek PCI, NexStorm, StrikeStar, WASP2, VVP, VWS, HomeSeer, WinAmp, Weather Display, sometimes WeatherLink, and some other stuff, all on one computer with no problems.

[racenet]

Really, what that means is to use a computer that you do not use to surf, play games and other stuff like that.

I'm running 99% of all my weather stuff on 1 computer without any issues, including the lightning software.

[Weather Display]

I am runing nexstorm and WD on a low spec Netbook with no problems

[DaleReid]

Thanks for the reassurance that I should give this a try.

I don't do the games, video or picture processing on this computer, nor surf the net. Just weather stuff, but that includes posting to a web site.

I have another computer for 'normal' use.

Thanks again.

[C5250]

The primary reason for that suggestion has nothing to do with hardware capability. It is more to avoid the crashes and frequent reboots that are more likely with a general use computer.

All my weather stuff runs on my fileserver, which is rarely rebooted, and the activity of the weather software is barely noticed. Granted, it's currently a 6 core Phenom, but even when it was a dual core Athlon64 4200+ there was little notable load.