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Audio Production Laptop

I'm selling my desktop soon and need to get a laptop for college. I was wondering if you guys have any suggestions. I want to spend about $2000 +/- $300 but what I really need is

Pentium M/Centrino 1.6 Ghz+ with 512 kb cache+
1GB of DDR
128mb of Video memory
20-40 gb at least 5400 rpm

I was checking out a lot of sites like Toshiba, Alienware, etc but I couldn't find much below $2700. I'm really not picky as far as screens go, but I want a good desktop replacement. And no, I don't want to buy a mac

Don't worry about what I said above, thats only what I'd like to have...what do u guys have and how well does it serve you for fairly intensive stuff (reason, sound forge, serano, etc)

I got a Compaq Presario 2140US
AMD Athlon XP-M 2200
512MB DDR Ram
40GB HD
ATI Radeon Mobility video card
CDRW/DVD
15" Screen

I run:
Sound Forge
Acid Pro 4
Ableton Live
and afew others just perfectly

Reason also runs great but it depends on what instruments you have loaded up.

I haven't tried Serato on it, but people with similar computers have no problems.

Oh yea, I paid alittle under 1400CDN for it with an extended warranty.
The only downside to it like most laptops is the soundcard, but a nice M-Audio card or the Echo Indigo I/O will do just fine.

Too bad your biased against the mac. Get a Toshiba

quote:

Originally posted by Psiweaver Too bad your biased against the mac. Get a Toshiba

Yea, when it comes to audio production, Macs are miles ahead, my brother got the Powerbook G3 500mhz (I think) when it came out, and running Reason was flawless on it, was like having a 1Ghz Pentium.

I plan on getting a Mac after I kill my laptop......god dam fookin Winblows.

Yea, I'm gonna buy a M-Audio external thingy for sound...how is the battery life on that? I just put together an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ based system on peugot...

Motherboard UniWill 258KA0 Base Notebook
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Ram OCZ SODIMM PC3200 512mb (2) = 1024mb
Hard Drive Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 40GB Hard Drive
Video ATI Raedon 9800 Mobile 128mb
15" screen
CDRW/DVD

the total is like $1800 bucks...you can also configure a centrino system but I'm not sure that has enough power for what I want (long battery life tho)

quote:

Originally posted by Max Thomson Yea, I'm gonna buy a M-Audio external thingy for sound...how is the battery life on that? I just put together an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ based system on peugot... Motherboard UniWill 258KA0 Base Notebook CPU AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Ram OCZ SODIMM PC3200 512mb (2) = 1024mb Hard Drive Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 40GB Hard Drive Video ATI Raedon 9800 Mobile 128mb 15" screen CDRW/DVD the total is like $1800 bucks...you can also configure a centrino system but I'm not sure that has enough power for what I want (long battery life tho)

Thats a pretty sweet setup.

As for the battery life on mine, depends on what I do, if I run Reason on battery trying to do a bunch of things, I can only see it lasting half an hour, but just running the computer with nothing happening, it lasts just over 2 hours.

quote:

Originally posted by Max Thomson the total is like $1800 bucks...you can also configure a centrino system but I'm not sure that has enough power for what I want (long battery life tho)

Well, Centrino is not a processor. Centrino just means Intel CPU + Intel chipset + Intel WiFi. A Centrino package could include either a Celeron (bad) or a Pentium M (which can smoke a P4)

...so go for a P4 M? Sorry I'm not too up to date with everything...

No, not a P4-M. A Pentium M. There is a difference

Re: Audio Production Laptop

quote:

Originally posted by Max Thomson And no, I don't want to buy a mac

im a bit mac biased too.. but when it comes to production.. they run miles around theyr counterparts... we had em in our school labs

what about dell ?? They'r inspiron range is pretty sweet as well.. and get a firewire port.. u will never look bak

I really wouldn't turn your back on a Mac so quickly. I was a total Mac hater for a long time. I still think Steve Jobs is an arrogant tool but that's a different rant...

In 2000 when they moved to UNIX I took more interest. I liked the idea of switching to Linux but never found it practical enough to abandon Windows.

I bought a dual 1.8 with the 23in LCD about 8 months ago because I wanted to learn UNIX. (The Mac allows you to do as much or as little UNIX exploring as you want.) In the process I totally fell in love with OSX. It takes a couple weeks to get used to but there is no way I would go back now. It isn't perfect but it is far superior to Windows. It's like Apple actually cares about the quality of the product!

When I have to use Windows it reminds me of why I love my Mac so much. When my company laptop came up for refresh I ditched the standard IBM notebook and got the company to buy me the Powerbook G4 with the 17in LCD.

I use Bias Peak and Reason on my Mac for creating/editing and Rane SSL. The G4 1.5 is plenty fast, really I can't say enough good stuff about it...

I like to see all the mac support on here We always had macs in my house when I was growing up but when I went to college in 2000 I got a PC because Win2K is decent and OS 9 blows. With OS X macs are once again solid, powerful machines. I use an old iBook but I really like it (still got a PC desktop), sometimes it is really nice to have a real unix machine instead of having to run Cygwin...

Max, if you are getting this for college can you get a student discount? Does your school have a program with one of the major OEMs? Usually they do, you won't save tons but it might be enough.

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