Ebay Diagnostic laptops???? Any good

Snap-on owns Nexiq. I would do nothing less that order what you want direct from Nexiq or your local dealer. I have heard of many clones out there that are hard to spot. Not worth the risk to me.

 

I checked the date of the thread. 2017.

That being said.

Toughbooks are older laptops that really don't have much beef left anymore with what we run these days.

I build my own computers and consider laptops a spare disposible when necessary.

The only time i ever consider a laptop on Ebay is when E3 is just wrapped up and they are disposing the dual or tri video card equipped gaming laptops that were used in the show by the public for a week or more and they will sell at whatever winning bid is at when the timer runs out.

My spouse's computer is already going on 12 years continious service with original parts as built then, that's about twice to almost three times the 50K hours a CPU can be expected to endure over a life time of a computer. It runs windows 7 professional and has a number of hardware that is pretty good for it's time, the video card for example is a spare MSI 680 GTX with 4gb of video memory running on it so she can run anything she wants without lagging or stuttering.

I run three more of those cards on my ASUS Rampage Black Edition II motherboard with the i7 3930 6 core CPU cooled with a thermaltake 360mm radiator with 6 push pull fans on it. It idles at room temp on 27C and under gaming load will push 42C at times. I run a stack of 5 to 10 vertex three SSD's in Raid 5 that will load me into any multiplayer map FIRST and moving first towards the enemy objective before the other 60+ players finish loading into a modern game that has not yet been patched with a 30 second timer to enforce a equal start.

Keep in mind USB will support 128 devices. If I had say 50 SSD's off USB all together, I can probably power NSA in fort meade and keep up with them without a cascade failure.

There are a pair of Delta Server Class Fans pulling and pushing through the case along with 4 220mm fans driving air in and out along the way. The power supply is pulling on a special 30 amp T type outlet not common to housing. I had one installed three years ago so I can pull 30 amps to the computer at 120 volts when it needs to do it between 1500 to 2000 watts. It also has two CPU connectors to feed it specifically among other things that are fed. This machine is going on three years 24/7 service with about 25000 hours accumulated so far on the CPU. About three times that on the video cards which has been bought new and installed in three machines prior to this one.

When the wife's computer burns up the CPU, there is no point in spending a 100 dollars for a new CPU I have a spare in a drawer that may still do the job well. If it does not, then she will be a new laptop owner which will be erased of it's win 10 and edpart partition under DOS to virgin SSD and built and reimaged to backup off the old machine when it dies in a few hours she will be back up and running.

You can say that laptops are gaining in power, strength, gaming capability two or three video cards in them and huge amounts of ram. I have 64 gb of GSkill trident DDR3's on this machine, She has 32 gb of Gskill previous generation DDR 3 in hers.

When you get into DDR 4's in RAM and beyond the motherboard can accomodate that when the time comes to 128 gb total. I drive a Benq 120 hertz monitor at 24 inches. There is a 40 inch 4K monitor on layaway at 800 dollars that will replace this one refreshing close to 240 hertz. As my vision declines with age, the bigger and better I will see my targets and take them out.

I have full retail versions of XP, 95, 98 ME, Win 7 ul and pro. Plus a Knoppix forensics OS on a disk capable of getting into any machine. Linux is a option as well, Usually red hat.

I refuse to use vista, I refuse to use win 10. I also refuse to use touch screen and cameras attached to the machine or wireless. It has all of that ability ready to go at a moment's notice but the back of the motherboard only has certain wired ethernet attached to it for the router and thence to the local Telco that will send the data to and from either Sherwood AR, West Little Rock AR or Richardson Texas. I am within a half mile of a fiber optic backbone cable that runs dallas to Chicago via st louis.

The first internet provider who runs fiber optic to my home and attaches to my computer will get my subscription at whatever price it will be at. Moving 30 gb game files takes me about a hour. But updating about 1 tera in total after a reimaging or rebuild from a Array failure takes me approx 9 hours. Fiber optic will reduce that to less than 30 minutes.

I don't do satellite, I don't do bit coin, I don't do much of anything other than relay, posting here or gaming. Even the gaming has evolved to where I am very careful about who I game with. The new generation growing up are very filthy and quite unacceptable with their very bad words and insulting etc. It's way beyond what gaming was once 20 years ago. Ive been gaming roughly 48 years now started with the old electromechanical machines way back when and followed all of the developments in computing from Tandy 1000 cassette all the way through to today.

I got one more build planned. that will be my last build in this life. When I pass on it's going to be donated for the benefit of the college in my area to truly understand what is possible when you throw enough money for nothing but top dollar the very best hardware availible to retail at the time of the new build. The video memory for example on each card is approaching 32 gigabyte and there are super large fast SSD Hybrids that will run on Chemical gas to "Fly" the seeker head rather than the old huge earth magnets on the old spinner drives such as the older Raptor 150's which I still have on the shelf. Two are fine, one exhibits click of pending death and the 4th one burned up when a tornado took out our power lines causing the platter and it's seeker to simply score straight across from edge to middle when the whole thing went down along with the power outage and spike.

I am already a dinosaur. Dead and obsolete. Smart phones are self contained computer power equal to what I built in 1998 with the famous 1.6 gig CPU and the famed TI4600 video card. Cell phones continue to evolved and exceed those specs massively each year. The one thing they cannot store is data. That is where my 10 tera array comes into play via blue tooth off the cell. There is no limit to that 10 tera when it's replaced by a planned 60 tera array that will read and write at speeds which will require fiber optic to keep up. Everything else will simply not be adequate.

 

I'd recommend avoiding eBay. Lots of knock-offs and no guarantee they'll work fully or at all.

If you go on Snap-Ons website you can find a list of distributors. I'd recommend calling them all because pricing varies based on who is selling them. We were originally paying close to $1,200 and then after calling someone else they were selling them for $750.

 

Here's what a "friend" did.

Get the NexIQ USB clone from ebay. Software for Cummins and Detroit included. Link HERE ($350)
Get a used XP laptop. Link HERE ($225 with SSD solid state hard drive) (Should be Windows XP because some of the older software doesn't work well on Win8 or Win10)

With less than $800 spent you'll be able to read codes from Detroit and Cummins. Set all parameters on Cummins. Maybe set all parameters on Detroit. If you need full write capabilities for Detroit (reset DPF ash accumulator, etc) then look on ebay for Detroit Diagnostic Link

The "friend" had to buy a new battery for the laptop at a cost of $30. The "friend" also has to update the Detroit software once a year for about 90 bucks on ebay. My friend's set up has been working for about 4 years or so.

If you have a fleet, this stuff is a must. By the way, my local Detroit dealer will give me the Detroit software for about $500/year.

PM me if you have specific questions or need help.

 

Oh crud.... replying to a one year old thread.....

 

FYI, virtually none of this software runs on Windows XP anymore.

You might be able to get some very old, outdated version to work, but they're not going to run on any new trucks. And by "new" I mean probably anywhere from 2014 on.

Also - Nexiq Clones are notorious for barely functioning / not functioning at all / glitching out. Do what you will, but it's a risk.

 

Windows 7 still remains to be the most reliable for majority of the diagnostic platforms when combining multiple tools on one laptop. I hope new program updates dont start cutting it out as most people I know still stick with what works or what they are use too.

 

I guess I'm lucky. My WinXP Dell laptop, nexiq I clone has been working fine for five years now, even on my 2014 Cascadia's.

 

Most all of this software is free. I run Cummins Insite and Cummins Calterm on my MacBook Air in a separate partition on Windows 10 via BootCamp. Best bet, do some more research before you give your money away.

 

99% of this software is not free.

It's free if you pirate it, but no - it's not free otherwise.