VMWare and Computer suggestions

[nh88]

Hello,
I have used a miniscope with a MacBook Pro Retina booting into Windows 7 and with a Surface Pro (3) running windows 10.
I recently bought a new macbook pro but my University (in its infinate wisdom), has decided it will not allow users to dual boot computers. They have provided me with VMWare fusion but I have not managed to get it to work properly with a miniscope when running Windows 7 Enterprise with USB 3 support. I can get some video capture and a lot of crashes but I can't control the LED or exposure/frame rate. The miniscope is not recognised in device manager as MINISCOPE but as a VMWare USB driver so I am not very surpirsed it is not working properly.

Has any one else tried this. I know it is not a great way to proceed but ...
On a separate note, are there any examples of other computers, laptops that work. I may end up buying another laptop and so any suggestions of examples that work would be really helpful.
B
Nick

[Daniel Aharoni]

Hi Nick,
Before I answer your questions can you tell me your impressions with the Miniscope system running on a Surface Pro? I have always wanted to test the system with a Surface Pro but never got around to doing so. If it runs well it would be a great suggestion for other labs to use.

Concerning VMWare, we have never been able to get the system to work through it. Our labs almost exclusively using MacBook Pros but we have bootcamped them all to be able to boot directly into Windows.

Our IT department has similar restrictions on what can be done with computers ordered through the university. If you need to you can always just reformat the computer and install Windows yourself.

[nh88]

Hi Daniel,
Sorry for my tardy replies. Just back from a trip to Japan.
The surface pro works pretty well. I have the last but one version (I think it is Surface Pro 3) running windows 10. It does crash from time to time but it works and we have successfully used it for experiments in transgenic mice expressing a form of GCaMP. The only problem for me is that the screen is so high resolution, that the GUI is hard for me to read now i am getting long-sighted.

Relating to a previous thread elsewhere, I have not been able to use the Surface Pro to load up the EEPROM using Cypress, I have had to do that with a macbook pro.

Because Macbooks are quite expensive and we cannot get equipment in and out of our animal unit very easily so need dedicated computers, I would like to find a desktop or laptop that is reasonably cheap but good enough and keeps our IT people happy. Sadly in our University, installing anything yourself is becoming a problem. Just having admin access is a battle in itself !!!!