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Help me choose the right Laptop for Audio Recording & Gigging?!

post #1 of 9
3/6/05 at 4:04am
Thread Starter 
Please help me choose a laptop! I will be using the laptop for 2 purposes:
1) A Portable Recording Studio
2) Gigging with Reason's Soft Synths

I already have a Presonus Firepod 8 channel recording interface, a midi keyboard, Cubase, and Reason.

My Ideal Laptop Requirements:

Windows XP SP1, Pentium4 or PentiumM or Celeron, 1 GHz Processor or faster, 512 MB Ram, Firewire port or a free PCMCI slot for a firewire card, USB2.0, 20 Gig HD, CDR drive

Any recommendations...preferably under $850??

Which of those processers would be best?
Is it true that the faster processors eat up batteries quicker...if so...then for my situation--what do you suggest as far as a good balance between speed, power, and battery endurance.

What about a Dell Inspiron 1000 or 6000?
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post #2 of 9
3/6/05 at 6:32pm
i would say a powerbook, but that is out of your price range sadly.
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post #3 of 9
3/7/05 at 7:10pm
>Which of those processers would be best?

Pentium 4 will be the fastest, obviously. Pentium M will probably have the best life on it. Personally I have recently decided the Mobile processors worth it myself.

>Is it true that the faster processors eat up batteries quicker...if so...then for my situation--what do you suggest as far as a good balance between speed, power, and battery endurance.

Not technically true but it tends to hold true. You can have 2 same speed processors that were manufactured differently that would eat up different amounts of power.

Seablade
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post #4 of 9
3/11/05 at 4:22am
Do they even make laptops for under $850??
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post #5 of 9
3/11/05 at 4:32am
With Dell coupons, I've seen pretty decent laptops sell for $750.
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post #6 of 9
3/11/05 at 11:06am
Yes they do, but really you wont have much luck for serious editing with them most of the time. If you absolutely need one, and can get by with taking a LONG time editing, then sure go ahead. I can get a decent(Non EMachines) AMD64 Laptop for just over 1 Grand myself so stepping back in quality a bit I should be able to get stuff a little cheaper for lesser quality.

Seablade
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post #7 of 9
3/14/05 at 12:54am
YOu need to go at least $1200 for a decent audio editing laptop. On top of that you need to buy an external firewire audio card, like something from M-Audio.

It's also better to get a high res wide screen too to manage you sessions better. I've never used Reason, but I use CubaseSX and it works well on my setup. I'm probably going to sell my audigy notebook and delta1010 and get an M-Audio Firewire Solo.

Bottom line, I'd wait a little longer to save up and get something better. Don't even think of going under 1gb of ram.
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post #8 of 9
3/14/05 at 5:26am
How do you use a Delta 1010 with a notebook??
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post #9 of 9
3/14/05 at 3:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by citizen
How do you use a Delta 1010 with a notebook??
I probably should have made it more clear, I use the delta 1010 in my desktop machine. I figure if I sell that and get the firewire one I could just swap it whenever I want to record on my laptop.
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