Music Ready Laptop

[Bosta]

Wassup. I'm looking into getting a laptop and running Fruity, Sound Forge, and maybe acid on it. (including holding all of my samples) I dont know nething about laptops....can someone inform me of the pros and cons of it before I invest in it. How much memory and etc do I need?...... & what about the mouse. I have a hard time messing with that ish...or maybe im just not use 2 it. Fill Me in

Thanx

 

[BeAtArKiTeK]

Yo Any New Laptop Should Don Fine Because U Are Not Really Gonna Be Doing Any Recording But Just Make Sure Its Preferly

1. Amd Anthlon 2000 + or more / Pentium 4
2. Atleast 40 gig Hd (preferly More)
3. Atleast 256 mb Memory ( preferly 512)

Try To Stay Away From Intel Celerons If U can


But other Than That You Should Be Fine

Later On U Can Add A better soundcard, more memory, bigger hard drive, etc...


Peace

 

[Equality 7-2521]

i use an acer extensa 2001ML. i chose this because it has a dvd burner and is cheap but good quality and has 256RAM and 40 gig hard drive which is enough for me.

i use an echo indigo I/O soundcard which slides into the PC II slot. if your doing live recording and need lots of ins, a firewire solution would be the goer.

i use a mini mouse with retractable cable which plugs into a usb port.

 

[x-squizet]

for a good laptop go to bestbuy and get a toshiba with atleast amd 2000+ or p4, 60 gb hard drive, and up grade the memory to 512 mb to hold all of your samples and stuff, then if you want add a protools mbox for you sound card and you will be set.

 

[Copenhagen]

Even though I use ProTools M-BOX myself, I wouldn't recommend you to get this. There are cards that better suit your needs, and with the stuff you'll be doing, you should be able to do it with a a internal PCI card, or a small external USB or Firewire card.
With ProTools M-Box, you'd have to run everything through a DigiMME helper, to get sound out of your other software etc. The M-Box is primarily for use with ProTools, and that is not your setup.

At least, that's my 2 cents.

As Equality 7-2521 wrote, you can just get a external USB mouse to solve your problem with fiddling with the little knob or pad on a laptop.

Regarding the laptop itself, I would personally suggest a Pentium 4...but that's because I am not much of an AMD man, and have had plenty of trouble with AMD machines, and Celeron isn't worth much.
Other than that, I would just make sure you start out with 512 MB of RAM (as this is what holds a lot of your temporary data when you are making your music) , and at least 30-40 GB harddisk. You can always upgrade your hardisk to something bigger at a later point.

 

[Formant024]

^^^^ with the neighbour on this one, stick to Intel, dont confuse audio with gaming, we dont care bout videocards hehe.

Ehm..... Dell has a nice new media laptop, covering pretty much the latest trends, expensive, looks nice and has balls. You stick a RME cardbus with the RPM or Multiface and you're medium pimpin.

or

Get a 17" G4 Powerbook and a MOTU firewire interface and you're up with them pimpin godz hall of fame. But it'll cost you dearly.

 

[djswivel]

im sorry, but im gong to have to disagree with evr single laptop recommendation here.....if you're doing multimedia projects (music, video, etc), GO WITH A MAC!!! Get a Powerbook and make sure its got enough memory, HD space etc and your set. I have a powerbook titanium G4 and its amazing....768mb ram, 80gb hd, 867mhz processor (which is faster than any 1ghz+ pc i've ever used)....OSX is sooo easy to use as an operating system so switching from PC to mac is simple.....They are a little pricey, but you get what you pay for.....If you have a lower budget, get a Dell or something, but if its in your budget, GO WITH MAC.

 

[Formant024]

So you're disagreeing with my powerbook recommendation ?! I'dsay go with mac if you understand the benefits of using logic.

 

[Copenhagen]

I agree with you Swivel, if I had to look at the laptop only, and had the budget, then I would certainly go with a Mac.
However, I do find the OS to be a drag, and if you don't have a lot of money and want to share some of your stuff then, as far as I understand, you can only do so with other Mac users. Your software possibilities should, according to my knowlegde, also be less and more expensive.
Without trying to turn this into a heated Mac vs PC debate, Macs are definitely good, but with the many people who own PC's and the price of Apple stuff, it seems to me, that music production companies are catering more and more to the PC world.

 

[Formant024]

I consider mac as a professional product for people in businessusing it as a tool, a laptop can be used as an alternative but in general people would choose a laptop because it's cheaper due to warez software availabilitynad and multi purpose use. I pro audio/visual designer would always go for the mac because paying for the software isn't optional, it's a tool you need to execute your profession in order to make money.

That, I think is a big, big difference.

 

[Vex]

I got a Sony Vaio laptop. Very very powerful. Good for music. Would eat a Mac.

safe.

 

[Formant024]

A vaio is nice, but by far wont eat a G4 powerbook. The difference is in the OS, implying a difference of a 131 kernel drivers to 1 under windows. Not even beginning bout cosmetics ( 17"/1cm high)...

You gotta like working with difficult programs though, logic is not for the beginner.

 

[Shonsteez]

Check these: Ive always wondered about these - they look dope as fuck!
Completely dedicated to making music with a PC too -

http://www.carillondirect.com/clnweb/index.jsp?country=UK

STEEZ

 

[x-squizet]

yo how much those laptops cost in american dollars

 

[x-squizet]

also www.alienware.com they have some good laptops and daw's

 

[Shonsteez]

yo how much those laptops cost in american dollars

Their up there man, u gotta have big cheese for these suckers...theyre ill tho.

http://www.carillondirect.com/clnweb/laptop.jsp?country=US

 

[HaZwaiOh]

i´m using an acer aspire with a amd athlon xp2400, 512 mb ram (32mb goes to the graphic card though), and a 60 gig harddrive and it works nicely.
i also do have a mobile pre usb by maudio for recording it, but with asio4all you can setup the internal soundcard to work with asio quite well.
just some ideas, i´ve seen that laptop on ebay sell for around € 600

 

[FTdub]

i also do have a mobile pre usb by maudio for recording it,


Those M-Audio usb sound cards are nice, i got one and love it. I have been pricing and debating pc vs mac laptops, and the best pc that I have come across are the tosiba satelitte series. They designed these with competing with the mac's in mind. They cost less, get a bigger monitor, all the fixins(512ram, 60-80gb HD, 2.8-3.0 Ghz processors, and Hyperthreading) But the sweetness is that they are suped up for multi-media. Raydeon video card, digital audio, dvd burner, etc. 3 usb, and firewire. Checkem out, im probably going to buy 5 for audio and video editing classes.