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Which laptop to buy?

I'm currently thinking of getting serato, and need to buy a laptop for less than �400 ($800) otherwise I might as well just get two CDJ800's. The problem is with most new laptops you pay for stuff you don't need, like graphics card etc. I just want a reasonably fast one with sound card and decent size hard drive. So obviously a macbook is out of the question.

Any recommendations?

http://www.alienware.com/configurat...ode=SKU-DEFAULT

You might check for used laptops if money is a limitation. New ones come with Vista which I know is a bit dodgy with some DJ software (don't know about Serato). Old laptops have XP which is well-understood.

I'm still running a Toshiba Satellite A30 or A33 with 2.8 Ghz mobility Pentium 4 - still a very good machine and fast enough, has a 1400x1050 screen. I just put in 2 Gb ram and looking for a new HD as the old 60 is full. You could get something like that very cheap.

My next machine will be a Mac of some type.

btw here is a DJ in your area that uses a MacBook and transports the gear in a Smartcar: http://myspace.com/imianwilliams

Toshiba, Dell, HP, Sony etc...

I really think Toshiba makes the best laptops, but just make sure you can get a decent HD. They still have some with 4,200 RPM hard drives, which are slow as hell, so at least a 5,400 RPM HD (which are common in laptops) and 2gb of RAM...decent processor (like 2.0 ghz). You could get a decent one (know your from the UK, but I configured one with American dollars and it was $1,350). People might try to push Mac on you, but unless you really want to delve into production as well, most PCs are more than adequate, even for production. I personally think Macs are over-rated, esp now having Intel processors just like PCs.

HP Pavilion dv9500t

Can customize and add a nVidia 8600 video card

that alone has 256RAM and is 128BIT and can play games on medium settings.

2 gigs ram

Dual core Proc

Dual SATA HDDS

quote:

Originally posted by Spirit5 Toshiba, Dell, HP, Sony etc... I really think Toshiba makes the best laptops, but just make sure you can get a decent HD. They still have some with 4,200 RPM hard drives, which are slow as hell, so at least a 5,400 RPM HD (which are common in laptops) and 2gb of RAM...decent processor (like 2.0 ghz). You could get a decent one (know your from the UK, but I configured one with American dollars and it was $1,350). People might try to push Mac on you, but unless you really want to delve into production as well, most PCs are more than adequate, even for production. I personally think Macs are over-rated, esp now having Intel processors just like PCs.

I was just gonna say 320gb external hdd for $80(aus)? surely external hdd is the way to go with laptops?

Apple, ASUS and Toshiba.

Avoid Dell and HP.

quote:

Originally posted by Darkarbiter I was just gonna say 320gb external hdd for $80(aus)? surely external hdd is the way to go with laptops?

Yeah but it's not always the most convienent carrying around an external HD for gigs (unless it's a small one). Sure they are genuinely more powerful than the ones you get built into the system, but 5,400 RPM is more than adequate...just 7,200 might be a little beter for production purposes...retrieve files faster, the whole system will just run faster with at least a 7,200 RPM HD, there's 10,000 RPM drives but those are bound to fail and be really loud. Not quite perfected HDs at that speed yet for consumer use.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm Avoid Dell and HP.

What's wrong with them? A lot of people use Dell and HP laptops...no big issues. I will agree they probably aren't as good as Toshiba or Asus, but certaintly are more than adequate....pretty much the same specs as most Toshiba's, but maybe a little cheaper build quality. Dell XPS line of Laptops are very good for stuff like music production, DJing, game playing etc...and i'm not talking abot the gaming laptop, just the multi-media ones. You could probably get a Dell or HP with the same specs for a few hundred less than Toshiba.

Everyone always talks shit about Dell, but I've always had a good experience with them.

So there arent any laptops which are really perfectly suited to Serato? A lot of the ones people have been recommending have decent graphics cards, which I don't want, as its only going to be used for Serato.

Serato will run well on almost anything you would get.

Here are the system requirements from their website.

The minimum operating system requirements are either a 1 GHz Mac G4 with OSX 10.3, or a 1.5 GHz PC running Windows XP with Service Pack 2, either with 1G of ram or more.

Versions 1.7.2 and higher include support for the Microsoft Vista operating system. Note that we recommend Windows XP over Vista, most notably for performance reasons. You will be able to run XP at a lower USB buffer setting, meaning lower latency and better performance using XP than is achievable with Vista.

What I been using was Sony VAIO for ages before switched to Dell XPS M1330 that came with vista but erased drive and put on xp pro instaed. Built it with 250GB HD in mind to store media. Costed me $2,139 before shipping.

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