Gerry its not so much that Mach does not support laptops its just the ability to turn off all the power saving that come with laptops. I have EMC2 on a laptop and during my testing of my 5 axis Chinese board did not see anything you are experiencing. look at the bios on the lappy and see if you can switch it all off? or download the Ubuntu distro that EMC2 is wrapped up in and give that a try (remember for the motor setup look at the pictures that come with your board instructions for clues for set up rather than the verbal useless info in the text.