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Laptops
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| dJohn |
For you laptop DJs and producers, I was wondering what brand and model of laptops are suitable for producing and whatnot...looking for a fair balance of price, power, features and style.
I have a budgent of roughly ~2000 USD, and I was wondering how the Apple G3s or G4s, or Sony Vaios...
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. |
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| Vlad |
If your gonna get an apple laptop, buy the G4.
If your gonna get a PC laptop, buy a Dell.
End of story. |
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| whitesmoke |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vlad
If your gonna get an apple laptop, buy the G4.
If your gonna get a PC laptop, buy a Dell.
End of story. |
he said it perfectly. i have a dell and i love it. |
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| tvmann |
| Vlad & Whitesmoke - can you give more information on why you like Dell notebooks? Thanks. I have a Dell tower and it's great but the Dell notebooks seem a little expensive compared to other brands. |
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| auujay |
In the Apple OS X world definitly get a G4. The new G4 iBooks are sweet (though be aware that the 14" iBooks have a max resolution of 1024x768). If you live in a major city, there may be an Apple store near you, check it out, play with them. See how ing awsome the the hardware is. If there are no Apple Stores I quess you could look for CompUSAs or other places to get your hands on the hardware, but usually those sales people don't know dick about Apples so take what the say with a grain (like a huge mound) of salt.
With the PC notebooks I hear Dells are OK (they sell a buttload of them so they can't be that bad). I do hear from people that the Gateway notebooks suck (although it is cute that they want them to look like the Apple line) but maybe their newer ones are better. That said, I worked in IT for a large company that used PC desktops (Dells) and notebooks (IBMs) and I would highly recommend ThinkPads. They are very sturdy notebooks. There was a survey of IT support personnel across the counry and one of the things they asked about were notebooks they have the least problems with; IBM ThinkPads was the huge favorite. In my mind that says a lot, because these people get a good "sample" of the notebooks out there (not just one bad "lemon" or a lucky one that works) and they can see trends just were they work. The Sony's are cool but sometimes can be a real bitch because they sometimes do not let you boot from the CD (so loading Linux, or FinalScratch sux big time). |
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| `pr0digy |
| My father has an IBM Thinkpad, and it performs well, as well as taking tons of abuse over a year or two. |
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| BlInX |
| My dad owns a dell laptop he is comfortable with it, I'm concetrating on a mac, since i need it for school and graphic designing, but hey if your looking for a laptop to install tracktor and all kinds of programs and your concetrating on buying it for another purpose than work get it... I'm not saying the dell is horrible for work, but im a fast worker and i need something fast that holds huge programs.. |
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| Vlad |
| Dell is superb compared to the other simply because of their customer support... there isnt a single company out there that has this kind of support. A month ago my hard drive got fried and I couldnt use my computer, I called Dell, they made me run a harddrive test, and than we scheduled a day for the tech guy to come. He came, installed the hard drive and left... free of charge. The warranty's are GOLD! |
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| las3rjock |
First off, I would recommend against getting a Sony. I have a Sony VAIO PCG-GRX520, and I just discovered that it doesn't have a line-in jack. As a result, I would have to connect my mixer to the microphone jack in order to record or stream mixes, but there is a 20 dBV mismatch between the signal coming from my mixer and the signal level that the microphone input is designed to accept. I tried to find an appropriate attenuator at Radio Shack to compensate for this mismatch, but they either don't have such a thing or they don't have such a thing in stock. :(
If your mostly going to use this computer for DJing and production, I would recommend going the Apple route. The Powerbook 15" Combo Drive model fits neatly within your price range and seems to have the best price/performance balance among Apple laptops. I would recommend against getting an iBook because it seems to lack a line-in jack (at least according to the Tech Specs posted on Apple's website). |
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| Vert |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vlad
If your gonna get an apple laptop, buy the G4.
If your gonna get a PC laptop, buy a Dell.
End of story. |
Not end of story.. but close. I own a dell d600, and love their souped up warranties, but if I had unlimited funds, I would definitely be an IBM T40 owner ;) :D..
Oh, the thing about the mac still being better for graphic design is bull. The only reason people think that is because apple came out with the gui first, so naturally all the graphic design software was developed for it. Then came windows... and things are exactly even now.
es |
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| Vlad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vert
Not end of story.. but close. I own a dell d600, and love their souped up warranties, but if I had unlimited funds, I would definitely be an IBM T40 owner ;) :D..
es |
Yea the IBM is also a good piece of machine... but you get so much more with Dell than IBM. For what you would pay the $2400 for a T40 (256 RAM, 40 GB), on Dell you could get 512 RAM ez and 100 GB.
Your choices are:
Dell Latitude 600m (@$1800) -or- Mac Powerbook G4 Combo Drive ($1899)
If you can pool some extra money together go with:
Dell Latitude 600m (w/ xtra goodies) (@$2200) -or- Mac Powerbook G4 Super Drive ($2599) -or- IBM Thinkpad T40 (@$2400) |
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| dJohn |
Hey everybody thanks alot for your inputs...it's helping me alot more than you probably think.
So I've narrowed it down to Dell, IBM and Apple...how are the iBookG4s compared to the regular G4s?
Thanks again. |
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