Laptop primarily for audio production

Posting to remind myself to come back to this as I gotta head to work right now.

In the meantime I strongly suggest doing a search for posts by me involving production or audio in this topic to get a head start on what I am about to say. Short version I at one point wanted to go the same route as you are aiming for now, but I have since learned there are better options. To give you a hint, my MacBook Pro is not filling in for my currently dead audio workstation. Combine it with a decent external HD via FW800 or eSATA(Via Expresscard) and an audio interface and it is not doing badly at all now.

Seablade

Heh no problem. Back with a little time to reply more in depth, but without to much time right now as I am being told to come to bed by the wife. Above all in audio production you want a quiet machine. May not seem all that important until you really start working with it, but it is IMO. And usually the DTR laptops do not fall anywhere near this category, and more fall under the loud as a really annoying cockroach...... under a jet plane taking off on the runway.

That is why I stay away from them myself. Anyways other details...

Make sure you get a Ti based Firewire controller. Others may work, but Ti has proven to be the most reliable, and other chips can have problems show up with specific revisions(Or across entire lines I suppose). Any decent audio interface manufacturer will probably repeat this as well.

As you noted, video cards aren't really all that important to audio, and since they tend to increase the heat in a machine, which in turn increases the noise level for cooling, I would say unless you need it for something else, stick with either an IGP or a lower powered discreet.

Also as you have probably noticed, 6-Pin powered firewire ports tend to be lacking on the PC side of things unfortunately. Sadly I consider the powered firewire one of the greatest things about my MBP, and I think there is only one OEM on the non-Mac side of things that uses them for laptops, with that being Samsung or Fujitsu, I forget which. But the ability to power from firewire not only adds immensely in terms of convience(Not having to carry around wall worts) but also helps in terms of it can avoid group loops in smaller setups which occasionally happen and increase the noise you hear as a result. I can go into more detail with this if needed, pretty much if you get a wall wort though make sure it is plugged into the same outlet as your laptop, preferably via a surge strip so you know the same ground is used.

7200RPM drives will serve you fine. There is a noise and power draw increase that makes 10,000 RPM drives not worth it IMO, and I don't believe I am alone in that regards. To tell the truth nowadays a high capacity 5400 RPM drive can fulfill in a pinch(Currently running a couple of sessions off one via FW400 myself without a problem for instance, but I still recommend 7200 and FW800 or higher speed, so your eSATA would suffice fine).

Disk Striping? I wouldn't bother for just two disks. Put your OS on one disk, and your music/sounds on the other. Your OS reading and writing data to the HD at inopportune times will slow down performance to much IMO. I did a recent comparison between 2 HDs, one internal 5400 with my OS on it, one external 5400 with my data. The external in that situation was sustained at about 6x faster transfers(And was doing more than enough to handle 48 track sessions sync'd to video). The internal performance was abysmal as the OS was reading and writing data from that drive at the same time.

I personally would stay away from Vista like the plague, but I don't tend to like MS no matter what(More of a Linux guy myself), but especially Vista I would avoid. Stick with XP if you can IMO.

My personal suggestion would be not to aim for a DTR outright, but go with a more typical, and quiet laptop, single drive, and use an external for your music/sounds. FW is a great thing of course, eSATA for HDs should be pretty doable, and get at least 2 Gigs of RAM.

By the way, never underestimate the usefulness of bluetooth, particularly a bluetooth mouse or trackball. No wires to plug in so convienient, but trying to do mixes on a trackpad is a pain in the arse IMO.

Seablade