Choosing a Laptop for Music Making

[Steve@39]

I have used MBP and various Windows laptops in the audio field (provided by employer), and to be honest I see no real advantage in paying extra dollars for the MBP, nice though that is. I used a new Macbook pro for a week and it failed under warranty, also have a friend who is having annoying intermittant problems using a second display with his MBP..these are things I take into account when I decide to buy my next computer shortly, although I nearly bought a MBP recently, I 've seen some excellent results with some of the thumping gaming Laptops running Windows 7 and 8 on Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Samplitude so far. I am now leaning in the gaming Windows based laptop direction as a far as bang for buck.

[defeasible]

My macbook pro is dank. but it's not as versatile as say a mac pro

[jaynm26]

#1 - processor i3/5/7
#2 - how much processING can be done at once which is RAM

Just stick by these two rules of thumb and you should be fine.
Me- a MacBook Pro i5 w/ 8 GB ram.
Also dell Mobile Workstation i7/16 GB Ram.

[Daián Schvind]

In my opinion, A very powerful PC or Laptop isn't a necessity.
I've made orchestral tracks with 20 to 57 instruments in a Compaq Presario laptop with 512MB RAM, 1.6Ghz Intel Celeron and no fancy soundcard. When you love music you just try to do what you can and then find other ways to do what you can't. I've always used FL Studio and Adobe Audition. My first experiences with music where in an old HP Pavilion with a 4GB hard drive, 333mhz intel processor and 256MB of RAM! I've always found workarounds to the performance issues/lack of power... I learned A LOT that way and instead of using 20 fancy plugins during mixing and mastering I started to THINK.
Now I have an HP Pavilion G7 laptop. 2GHz AMD Dual Core, 4GB RAM. I've had it for about 6 months and never had issues. I never got Audition nor FL to screw up or anything and I've really played around with the thing. It's more than enough for me. I guess it's because I've learned to squeeze out the most out of weak computers.
I think all this can be an issue in the music industry. They've got the equipment and they've got the power. Sometimes that makes everything a lot easier... but one can easily fall in a comfort zone where one doesn't get creative nor thinks. It can also be applied to life in general. You start learning when you hit the bottleneck and start to find your way with what you can.
Some people really give up because they don't have the power in their computers and others just wondered how in hell I managed to make stuff out of a Compaq Presario!

[kidkage]

others just wondered how in hell I managed to make stuff out of a Compaq Presario!

Wow. That's unbelievably insane. (I'm not saying you're lying though)
I've got less out of higher powered systems.

[kcearl]

Well my two year old MBP gave up the ghost last week...barely used, more just to update my iphone etc..

Wouldnt start up two weeks ago, now the repair shop is saying the logic boards gone...not worth replacing

I have an AIR with mountain lion as backup but its shit...mountain lion wont recognise half my devices and now shuts down if i plug in my powered hub

So ive bought a sony viao...twice the power for around $300 less than the MBP cost

I have a few older latops, even an old dell that i dropped onto the pavement from waist height...and it still works...im thinking that Pro maybe my last Mac laptop...just not worth it with the fragility and expense of their logic boards

[kcearl]

The viao also came with vegas, soundforge, and acid free...nice one, sure beats garageband

[SD88]

in my opinion any laptop duo or quad core can do the job.

[Nickword]

very cool! thanks for the info.

[Mixtape Meeko]

MacBook Pro with 16gb RAM