Music Editing/Recording Specific Laptop

Ack -- double post, sorry

If you have USB audio interface, you don't care about built in stuff -- and there aren't any production laptops out there with great sound systems anyway .. .

In my mind, for music processing you have 3 considerations:

I really like the Acer Aspire and Ferrari notebooks, the Pioneer Dreambooks and the Dell line -- all for different reasons.

The Acer line provides great value. They've got some ergonomic issues, and I've heard their support is iffy. However, they have very good hardware coverage

The pioneer is a good middle of the road machine for most users with few weakpoints. It's well thought out and very well built.

Dell simply has hte best support in the PC world right now . . . and for people who will use support, should be their number 1 choice.

Things you should be able to get in your price range:

To add to the above, which I think was mentioned on the second thread with the same subject, Dell is also a good choice. I've also heard only good things about VAIO as far as reliability, but the Dells do have a good reputation now.

There are a couple music specific laptops but they're in the $4-$6 grand area. zZounds.com has some bundles featuring Rain laptops (which I've never heard of) and they're one of the pricier ones. And I'm not sure if any laptop comes with 1/4" inputs. You'd have to have an outboard USB or FW device either way, it looks like.

Which wouldn't be necessarily true with a desktop form factor.

Everyone's pretty much featuring the Core-Duo chips these days, though the other CPU chips hold their own.

Since it has to be a laptop, the choices are even more limited than with a desktop, so basically get as much ram as your budget allows, and as fast a chip as you can get; probably 2+ GHz; 3-4 if you can get it. Balance out the chip and the ram to get within your budget and think about external FW hard drives for storage, maybe trading off a smaller 40Gb int HD for just running software, and something external for actual storage.

If having external gear is not an option and you need large internal storage, then your budget might have to go up a bit, especially with laptops, which as you know are priced at a premium simply because they're portable and components are harder to cram into the design.

I'm thinking maybe a Dell XPS notebook. You can spec your system out starting from a basic layout and increase this, decrease that, and see if you can hit your budget mark. For me, I'd probably start with an Inspiron basic and load it up with 2-3 Gb of ram, leave the HD at say, 40Gb, and have maybe a 2-3 GHz chip. Might come in just about $2K if you're careful.

Then maybe get one of the newer, tiny EXT FW hard drives starting at around 160Gb; maybe go for a 250Gb if budget allows.

Hope this helps.

Alright thanks alot guys. I checked out a bunch of those companies and I think Sony VAIO might be the way to go. I was able to customize a laptop on their site that worked out to about $1800 and has some really sweet specs. Its a custamized Sony VG-FE790 if that meens anything to you, lol. Most importantly it comes with:

-an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7400 / ICD 2.16 GHz

-2 GB DDR-SDRAM (DDR2-533, 1 GBx2) Windows Vista Premium Ready

- 120 GB Hard Disk Drive

I love the fact that theres 2 gigs of ram there. It makes me drule.

Any comments, or concerns? do you think its a good "bang for buck"?

Thanks

Hey great! Sounds like a good deal.

Best regards.

once again...thanks for the help guys

One more thought - the failure rate on laptops.

About one laptop in 6 needs repair service within 2 years. For desktops, it's 1 in 100. You'll put a lot of time and effort into the music on your computer - be sure to factor in risk (or make very frequent backups)

mate one more thing, check the hard drive speed! do not go below 5400rpm. this is one reason why desktops are still the staple for recording. the sound quality of a recording on anything below 5400rpm is pretty ordinary, because the disk cant keep up with the large amount of information being stored on it. 7200rpm is ideal but its very unusual to find a laptop with that speed. 5400 works fine.

yeah thanks man I checked and its a 5400 RPM drive. That should be good enough

One more thought - the failure rate on laptops.
About one laptop in 6 needs repair service within 2 years. For desktops, it's 1 in 100. You'll put a lot of time and effort into the music on your computer - be sure to factor in risk (or make very frequent backups)

That's a good point.

I would buy a cheap external USB disk and some backup software (2nd copy is only about $30 and works great) and use it to do backups whenever I connect to it or something. Disk crashes happen, and a laptop is more susceptible simply because it gets carried around, so more mechanical stress. I back up all the important directories on my home desktop on to a USB drive, and my work laptop is backed up daily to a server..