Last Minute Advice Requested

i would suggest the 8890 just because of the raid functionality!

i used to run pro tools at home on my desktop (digi 001)

i am going to install reason and fruity loops on my machine now just to mess with it while at school, and i use Wavelab on a regular basis

the machine you outlined is more than capable, but the additional cost for the 8890 is not that big.

Raid on these notebooks allows you to write to 2 hard drives at the same time, OR exactly mirror one hard drive in case of a hard drive failure.


If you write to 2 hard drives, you get increased speed, as well as the full disk space as one logical disk. you can find much more information on raid if you search the internet.


good luck on your purchase!

Um actually I do not recomend raid control set to recognize 2 hd's as one, for the following reason

most multimedia programs, and this includes sound forge, draw from deligated scratch disk, and operate faster with more stability when scratch disks are set to a secondary hard drive, they in fact recomend it... go see for yourself....

::loving macromedia, adobe, and soundforge on my 17" widescreen..........::

::drooling with a sh**ty grin::

hope this helps

If you have the $ and you want the best option (and if what Kesh is saying is right about the scratch disk) go the 8890 and get a disk in the 3rd drive bay rather than the TV tuner. You do lose the ability to input video via the S-Vid in port but for your applications it might make a lot of sense - RAID the first two disks and have scratch on the 3rd drive.

Read my report.

I have the 8890 with tv tuner and two hard drives. one a 60 gig 7200 rpm and one a 80 gig 4200 rpm. rest of specs listed below.

a) my machine runs great. I primarliy use it for office applications, music playing, music editing and recording (i.e. use friuty loops software), and video/game play.

b) some people may say gettting a 2nd hard drive at 80 gig 4200 rpm is a waste, but i say they have no idea (in less explcit language). I run all my programs and games off the 60 gig 7200 rpm and it is fast. The 80 gig 4200 stores all my music and video files, I also use the 80 gig as a tertiary backup drive (second is a removeable disk). For what I do there is no need for 2 60 gig 7200 rpm drives using RAID, and from what I read you have no need for RAID either. Having the internal 80 gig is soooooo much better than lugging around a external USB hard drive, and 80 gigs come on, thats a **** load of space. and 4200 rpm, you can hardly notice the diff. i have played games such as Max Payen 2 foff the 80 gig and there is no diff. you have to be a real tight a** to coun the difference, which is in seconds.

3) overall the 8890 is probaly the best computer on the market for the price. sure its a little bigger, but it looks great and if anyone says "hey look at that beast" either hit them with the damn thing or challenge them to a software test and watch them bow down to the performace of the 8890.

4) one recomendation, get at least 1 gig DDR 400 MHz 3200 Ram. I got a buddy with only 512 and mine machine kicks his but. I tend to have open music files, music editing files, internet, MS office, Chem Office, and video all at the same time and everythin gruns to a T!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love 8890 owners - they are so subtle

Good one Bundie .

It was primarly a PT based thread, but you might find some info here:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=16383

Past that I would echo the argument against RAID. Audio programs dont like for the most part, some wont even run with a RAID enabled system. Past that, wh hardware are you lpanning on using? If its MOTU or another firewire/usb audio interface I would recommend checking thier site on compatbility issues; some hardware doesnt like certian chipsets.

A quick note on the 5680. The second HD and the second battery both use the same drive bay so they can not be used at the same time. Unless that is, your planning on buying a spare primary battery and swapping batteries when needed.

Ben Shalom - I'm in the same boat as you, in terms of using the lappy as a DAW. I'm a songriter/composer as well as a music student, so I'll be running a lappy for recording, editing, mixing purposes as well as Sibelius and all that other non-music stuff. The machine you've outlined is pretty much identical to the one I'm saving up for this summer - keep me informed on how it goes for you, dude.

Good luck!

I have sonar 2.0 xl installed on my 8887. It is a previous generation Sager model but from my experience Sager's have been pretty reliable with sound as long as you don't rely heavily on the internal sound card. Don't get me wrong, it is fine for games and mp3's and what not but when you need the best quality for recording get an external sound card. I use the MAudio duo for mic inputs and output that to my Sager via usb. It is working real well. The only other thing I would reccomend would be, obviously, a lot of hard drive space.

You may also want to wait for the 8790. Not that there will be much improvement for audio but it will support prescott processors and will have the mobility 9700. Just check it out before you make your decision.

No the third disk replaces the TV tuner. The floppy on the 8890 is a fixed (non-removable) unit.

From Adam's review of the 8890, this is a shot of the TV tuner bay. You remove the tuner and insert the third disk drive. (You gotta love the guys who designed this beast).

No. On the 5680 the second drive bay, can have one of a floppy, 2nd disk or 2nd battery but not all at the same time.

Bay 2 on the 5680.



For more info and pics on all the current models have a look at the reviews and benchmarks sub-forum - the sticky threads there have it all.

i still stand by my belief that the raid will help out when recording multiple tracks at once. i was considering getting the m-box in the future for my lappy.

i haven't encountered any programs that have problems with raid. but i didn't think of the scratch pad issue. are you sure that's not because of banwidth limitations which will be resolved by the extra raid speed? I used to use scratch pads on the same drive but different partitions and never had any problems. then again, the 3rd disk is always an option for the scratch pads

Ok here is a page out of my Unix Admin book. Hope it will help.

Recall that you typically create several partitions during installations to decrese the likelihood that the failure of a filesystem on one partition will affect the rest of the system. These partitions should be spread across different hard disks to minimize the impact of a hard disk failure; if one hard disk fails, then the data on the other hard disks is unaffected.

If a hard disk failure occurs, you must power down the computer, replace the failed hard drive, power on the computer, and restore the data that was originally on the hard drive from a back-up source such as a tape device. The whole process may take several hours. For systems that must experience little or no downtime, such as a database server, there exists hard disk configurations that reduce the time it takes to recover from a hard disk failure. These configurations are called fault-tolerant and are typically implemented by a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) . RAID configurations may be handled by software running on an operating system (Linux, Unix, MS 2000 Server, etc), but are more commonly handled by the hardware contained within a SCSI hard disk controller.

There are currently seven basic RAID configurations, labeled level 0 through 6. RAID level 0 refers to RAID configurations that are not fault-tolerant. One type of RAID level 0 is referred to as spanning , and consists of two hard disks that are seen as one large volume . Thus if you had two 2GB hard disks, you could create one partition 4GB in size. Another type of RAID level 0 is called disk stripping . If there are three hard disks in this RAID configuration, then a file that is saved to the hard drive would be divided into three sections, with each section written to each hard disk concurrently; this allows the file to be saved in on third the amount of time . This same file can be read in one third the amount of time for the same reason. Unfortunately, if a hard disk fails in a RAID level 0 configuration, all data is lost .

RAID level 1 is often referred to as disk mirroring , and provides fault tolerance in the case of a hard disk failure . In this RAID configuration, the same data is written to two separate hard disks at the same time. This results in two hard disks taht have identical information. If one fails, then there is another copy that can replace the failed hard disk in a short period of time. The only drawback to RAID level 1 is the cost involved, as you need to purchase twice the hard disk space needed for a computer .

RAID level 2 is no longer used and was a varient of RAID level 0 that allowed for error and integrity checking on hard disk drives. Modern hard disk drives do this intrinsically.

RAID level 3 is disk striping with a parity bit, or marker, that indicates what data is where. It requires a minimum of three hard disk drives to function, and on of these hard disks is used to store the parity information . Should one of the hard disks containing data fail, you can replace the hard disk drive and regenerate the data using the parity information strored on the parity disk. If the parity disk fails, then the system must be restored from a back-up device.

RAID level 4 is only a slight variant of RAID level 3. RAID level 4 offers greater access speed than RAID level 3, as it is able to store data in blocks (instead of single bits) and thus does not need to access all disks in the array at once to read data.

RAID level 5 replaces RAID levels 3 and 4, and is the most common RAID configuration used today. It is commonly referred to as Disk Striping with Parity . As with RAID levels 3 and 4, it requires a minimum of three hard disk drives for implementation ; however, the parity information is not stored on a separate drive, but intermixed with data on the drives comprising the set. This offers better performance and fault-tolerance; if any drive in the RAID configuration fails, then the information stored on the other drives may be used to regenerate the lost information once the failed hard disk has been replaced. (It should be noted that more than three drives may be used in this configuration).

<edit: long winded example using math involved in technical explanation of how parity bits are used and how they work in RAID level 5.>

RAID level 6 is basically the same as RAID level 5, but adds a second set of parity bits for added fault tolerance and allows up to two simultaneous hard disk failures while remaining fault-tolerant.

Ben - whatever I can afford, really. This lappy is going to be a big chunk of any income I get over the summer, so I'm going to have to start small. My two first choices right now in terms of price and reputation are the Indigo Echi I/O, or the Tascam US122. One's a PCI card, the other's a USB drive, pretty completely different, but I'm still having a bit of trouble deciding which to go with. Of course once I start thinking, I could go for a digidesign mbox, an m-audio USB or Firewire solution.... I havn't a clue. I'm kinda starting myself off here, so I don't have any soft or hardware already. I'm building it from the ground up, and the laptop is the first step. Any advice, again, personal preference, anything, would be welcome.
In terms of gear, I've got my Line6 POD guitar rig, and I'm planning on investing in an M-Audio Oxygen8 controller right off... A half-decent condensor mic is close to the toop of the list, too, so far I'm using my Shure SM58 for demoing stuff, etc. I've got a little Behringer UB802 mixer going into my current desktop, and that's about the extent of my existing setup.
This is going to get expensive.