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express2100

Hello Vinyl

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Well I do not want a tower in my shop so I'll have to see how much it will cost me for a used laptop with a dedicated serial port. There are a few on CL for under $250 but not sure on the port. I am leaning towards a PC laptop for the cutter as long as I can design on my main Mac. I JUST WANT SIMPLICITY, RELIABILITY AND SUCCESS :) My head is so full of info right now most of which makes little sense to me at this point. I am a hands on learner. Show me and I get it! I'm about to start poking my nose around my favorite local sign shop!! Ha Ha Actually he is a pretty cool cat. He may just give me some free advice and hands on experience. After all, I will never be a threat to his business. They are TOP DOG in the area.

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PC pretty much dominates in the sign/large format printing  market. Not to say anything bad or make others mad but limiting yourself not being familiar with a pc might hinder you in the future. Best bet go buy a screaming new PC tower in components and put it together. If you do not know how hire a high school kid to do it for twenty bucks. Should take no less than a hour to be up and running and no more than 400 bucks tops for a superb system. under 300 for something better than average. Then its new. No question about failure and will last longer than the cutter if cared for.  

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Well I do not want a tower in my shop so I'll have to see how much it will cost me for a used laptop with a dedicated serial port. There are a few on CL for under $250 but not sure on the port. I am leaning towards a PC laptop for the cutter as long as I can design on my main Mac. I JUST WANT SIMPLICITY, RELIABILITY AND SUCCESS :)

 

I use Signcut Pro which is what used to come with the uSCutter machines (had 1 year free subscription) They are mac compatible and are a great cutting software that you just import your designs into and it will get it to the cutter. You can get a free trial and buy subscriptions in various increments at reasonable rates. I just (yesterday) finally decided to buy the permanent lifetime version which has a usb key but the subscrition based one uses an internet connection to be sure you are licensed. I don't know how often it checks or what happens if you internet goes down but I have used it a lot and carried it over to my high dollar cutter after the upgrade because I like the layout better than the ones that were available from Summa and it is cross platform compatible (mac & pc) if I decide to upgrade my laptop to a macbook later. You might give it a try if you are having trouble cutting from your mac and you wouldn't have to make an immediate decision on what you will do for your shop until you get a little more seat time under your belt.

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<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="mopar691" data-cid="346781" data-time="1394047634"><p>

If you do not know how hire a high school kid to do it for twenty bucks. .</p></blockquote>

Not too sure how to take that one. But thanks

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Was not insulting or trying to be. Some people do not like to open them up. Most kids in any computer classes love screwing them together and would gladly jump at the opportunity do it for a few bucks. 

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I'd hire the high school kid myself. I prefer to go under the hood of cars, not computers

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In my experience high school kids just like screwing in any form. Screwing up, screwing off....but ya they seem to just "get it" where us older codgers have had to fight for it. 

 

I bought my first computer in about 1990 because I was remodeling a grade school where they were putting a computer lab in for the kindergarten kids. I knew right then I better get on board or we would be sunk. 

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That's OK because when their cars die I still know a thing or 2 they don't. Don't do it for a living anymore but still nice to know. Been slowly learning the basics of pcs for years but by the time I learn it it's already outdated.

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Good luck on the cars unless they are old like us. The new crap is all computer garbage!

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Found a Dell Latitude E6500. Is there a serial port in this spec list of ports?

IEEE - 1394, docking connector, USB 2.0 (x4), VGA, Display Port, RJ-11 (optional), RJ-45, eSATA, USB PowerShare, headphone/speaker out, mic

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Just for reference i use my early 2011 MacBook Pro on OSX Mavericks with my Graphtec CE6000-60 and Adobe Illustrator CS6 & Creative Cloud with the Graphtec Cutting Master 3 plug in (which you can download online) and it works great.

 

 I have not had any issues with it at all.  My decision came down to Graphtec vs Roland, and i chose the Graphtec since it works with the mac.

 

You can do a decent amount of work with the stand alone Graphtec Studio program on mac, but i prefer designing in Illustrator, and the plug-in for illustrator is great for my workflow.

 

Like some others have said you may need a windows computer in the future for running a large format solvent printer, but,  a cheap windows computer should be easy to fund along with the other $14,000+ invested if you end up doing that jn the future.

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Found a Dell Latitude E6500. Is there a serial port in this spec list of ports?

IEEE - 1394, docking connector, USB 2.0 (x4), VGA, Display Port, RJ-11 (optional), RJ-45, eSATA, USB PowerShare, headphone/speaker out, mic

 

No.

The serial port is listed as 9-pin RS232 (the cable itself is referenced as DB9, null)

 

Here, try this one ---  Dell 610  (under $100)

http://baltimore.craigslist.org/sys/4260279543.html

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