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Posted by magik_ss on Jan-15-2009 20:41:

New laptop

Hi,
I am in a desperate need for a laptop. I am running final scratch with plans to buy traktor scratch. My old laptop is toast and need new one fast.

I would like to avoid Mac since I don't use it and I don't need anything fancy, maybe a solid audio card and that's it.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,

magik

Posted by Waterproofpaper on Jan-15-2009 21:08:

What is your budget.

High end: IBM, Sony, Dell XPS
Mid Range: HP
Low Range: Acer, Dell Vostro

Between the high end, i like hte build quality of the sony Z series. The Thinkpads all have ridiculous build qualities. Besides my macbook pro, i have the dell M1330 and it is a nice sized lappy thats easy to transport around.

You should get a mac though.. Basically with macs you dont have to worry as much about crashing and viruses. You can look at mad pornos and not get fucked. Its a little bit of a learning curve, but if you're not incompetent, then youll be used to it in less than a day.

Posted by magik_ss on Jan-15-2009 21:19:

Budget is up to $1,000.

What about toshiba?

If I choose pc, I guess to go with dual core pentium with couple of gigs of memory, decent size harddrive and solid audio?

Would I be able to transfer mp3's from pc to mac easily?

Thanks!

Posted by Zild on Jan-15-2009 21:21:

You aren't going to get solid audio out of any laptop without buying an external audio interface.

Posted by woscar on Jan-15-2009 21:23:

I think that any laptop with a decent amount of RAM, and HDD will do the job. I heard of a few sound issues with Traktor that a few Toshiba models suffer from but aside from that I think you're OK.

Perhaps somebody else can recommend a specific brand and model

Posted by Zild on Jan-15-2009 21:26:

Pretty much any new laptop you can buy will run fine. I would look at things like weight and battery life first.

Posted by Waterproofpaper on Jan-15-2009 21:43:

quote:
Originally posted by magik_ss
Budget is up to $1,000.

What about toshiba?

If I choose pc, I guess to go with dual core pentium with couple of gigs of memory, decent size harddrive and solid audio?

Would I be able to transfer mp3's from pc to mac easily?

Thanks!

Get a core2.

If youre close to a bestbuy/futureshop, you could find last seasons macbook for cheap. Ive sold one for $600 basically brand new (2.1ghz/1gb/120). The best ive gotten the 2.4/2gb/160 version sold for is $700, but it was mad open boxed.

Luckily ram is cheap, but youll be fine with the 1gb in the macbook. If you want to upgrade to 2gb you can do so on newegg for $15 with free shipping.

MP3s are the same on both platforms.

Posted by Zild on Jan-15-2009 21:45:

Wow that is cheap. I would actually pay more for one since they are firewire and I use a firewire audio interface. They fucked the new ones up with no firewire.

Posted by Waterproofpaper on Jan-15-2009 22:02:

Yeah.. you can possibly get a blackbook for under $1000 if you can find it and if you can haggle. The biggest reason i got the pro over the nonpro was because of the higher end screen, 2nd place has to be the firewire 800 port. If you dont mind the size, the gateway FX series is pretty good. Its just fucking huge though.

Newest one is:
p8400 @ 2.26
4gb DDR3 @ 1066
320GB @ 7200rpm
9800GTX @ 512mb DDR3
1920x1200 UXGA screen.

Its butt fucking ugly though.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...d=1218043606827
What sucks is that it used to be $1049, but they upped it $100 which still is a good deal for what it comes with. Just make sure you spray paint it or cover it with decals.

Posted by magik_ss on Jan-16-2009 01:30:

Thanks!!!

Posted by limin_li on Jan-16-2009 03:47:

No flame please

you are in luck. 1000 will get you a brand new macbook pro (previous gen)

Specs

2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo

2gigs of ddr2 pc-5300 (upgradeable)

120 gigs hard drive (upgradeable)

Nvidia 8600m GPU

Posted by Ted Promo on Jan-16-2009 04:07:

You really don't need anything fancy to run this type of stuff. The only real reason to get a mac over something else is for Logic. That's if you're getting into audio production though. Any computer with enough RAM (at least 2 gigs), a decent enough processor (any dual core should be sufficient, you could probably settle for an AMD), and probably at least 200gigs of HD space.

Posted by Waterproofpaper on Jan-16-2009 04:20:

Indeed.. i used to run serato off of a celeron with 512 ram.

Posted by Ted Promo on Jan-16-2009 04:30:

quote:
Originally posted by Waterproofpaper
Indeed.. i used to run serato off of a celeron with 512 ram.

Well yeah I was just stating that those specs would mean he wouldn't face any real slowdown. And he could get a computer with those specs from probably around 4-500 if he searched.

Posted by magik_ss on Jan-16-2009 16:10:

Maybe it is better to check Mac but I am worried that my old Final Scratch 1.5 software will have issues on it?

It says it is built for Mac OS X?

Would that cover all newer Mac OS versions?

magik

Posted by Zild on Jan-16-2009 17:46:

quote:
Originally posted by magik_ss
Maybe it is better to check Mac but I am worried that my old Final Scratch 1.5 software will have issues on it?

It says it is built for Mac OS X?

Would that cover all newer Mac OS versions?

magik

The current version is OSX. There are a bunch of different versions of OSX though.

Posted by Ryan0751 on Jan-16-2009 18:00:

How old is the Final Scratch software? Is it universal binary?

If not, it will run kinda crappily on a newer Mac (intel) since it would have been built for the older Mac's (power pc). OS X would have to emulate the power pc, which is fine for smaller apps but not great for power hungry apps.

quote:
Originally posted by Zild
The current version is OSX. There are a bunch of different versions of OSX though.

Posted by Zild on Jan-16-2009 18:01:

Final Scratch if pretty damn old. It might be PowerPc.