Laptop vs. Desktop

J

jaynm26

New member
Is the desktop gone? Are the considered ancient and scrapped to the heap along with side dinosaur bones? What is your take? Do still use/prefer desk over lap or are you along with the new age of mobility?
 
I sold my desktop and laptop to fund a new macbook pro a while back.
I always said I'd built an i7 desktop in time but so far just haven't had the need.

I can see the persuasive argument for multiple internal hard drives or pci audio/video cards, but for my purposes I'm set right now.

I think if I ever did buy a 'desktop' PC for the convenience of it it'd be a mac mini which really is a just a MBP at its core.
 
I have two desktop DAW systems....each has 4 seperate HDs (1 OS, 3 audio). The second DAW desktop was just recently built, as an upgrade to the first one, but both are still active.

Thing is...my DAWs are exclusively just my DAWs.
I don't do my email, or online purchases on them. I don't do my taxes or any kind of documents on them, I don't have them connected to the Internet, .....
...they are just my DAWs.

I don't do remote recording, so they don't have to be moved, they are a part of my studio, just like my console and other audio gear.

I have laptops that I use at work and home for all the other BS.....
 
Laptops are not in consideration for me because they don't have the lifespan of a good PC nor do they have the options for internal tweaking like the 2nd HDD, the quieter fan etc. All of which is in addition to Miro comment re perm. place in the room.
I have a laptop which I occasionally use for sketchingm remote/field recording but tha's about it.
 
A computer is a computer is a computer.

As long as you can connect the devices you need and it has the horsepower you need, that's all that matters.

In either case you really need multiple drives so that does take the 'portability' of laptops down.

I used an XP laptop for 5 years and now I went an iMac desktop; all the same devices hooked up and everything runs fine.
It was nice knowing I could take the laptop somewhere but as it began to age I became paranoid about moving it as I didn't want to risk my main production machine.
 
i can go both ways on this, but even on the rare occasion that I use my laptop it starts to get a lot less portable once I have the audio and midi interfaces, two monitors, mouse, keyboard, dongles and external drive hooked up to it :-) i do have a little macbook air that they gave me for work and use that with a focusrite 2 channel jobby and garage band. I use that for guerilla recordings like if I want to record at the park or in the woods or up in the attic or whatever...
 
miroslav said:
Thing is...my DAWs are exclusively just my DAWs.
I don't do my email, or online purchases on them. I don't do my taxes or any kind of documents on them, I don't have them connected to the Internet, .....
...they are just my DAWs.
Click to expand...

Same here. If your DAW is never going to move (or at least not more often than your furniture), then it's cheaper and more customizable to go with a desktop.
In the meantime, my general-use and live computer is a laptop.
 
It may not become an issue for most....but I also believe that with a desktop/tower system, the lifespan of its hardware is much better, a lot of it to do with proper cooling, whereas in a laptop, everything is just crammed in there.
I also believe that in most cases, the very high-performance systems tend to be desktop/tower types rather than laptops.
Sure, you can get a lot of performance out of some laptops too...just saying that performance systems tend not to be laptops from most computer manufacturers, and there must be some reason/logic there.
 
miroslav said:
It may not become an issue for most....but I also believe that with a desktop/tower system, the lifespan of its hardware is much better, a lot of it to do with proper cooling, whereas in a laptop, everything is just crammed in there.
I also believe that in most cases, the very high-performance systems tend to be desktop/tower types rather than laptops.
Sure, you can get a lot of performance out of some laptops too...just saying that performance systems tend not to be laptops from most computer manufacturers, and there must be some reason/logic there.
Click to expand...

PC's maybe Apple makes some pretty solid laptops that have great lifespans and durability
 
miroslav said:
It may not become an issue for most....but I also believe that with a desktop/tower system, the lifespan of its hardware is much better, a lot of it to do with proper cooling, whereas in a laptop, everything is just crammed in there.
I also believe that in most cases, the very high-performance systems tend to be desktop/tower types rather than laptops.
Sure, you can get a lot of performance out of some laptops too...just saying that performance systems tend not to be laptops from most computer manufacturers, and there must be some reason/logic there.
Click to expand...

That's all true, but I think it's much less of an issue than it once was.
I upgrade computers about every 5 years or so just to keep up to date, but I don't see my MBP letting me down before then, either physically or in terms of capability.
The last few generations of apple intel products have had a shelf life, mostly due to the 64bit transition; Hopefully that's a thing of the past.

I hope to be getting a decent bit of money back for it, even after those four or five years.
 
Steenamaroo said:
That's all true, but I think it's much less of an issue than it once was.
I upgrade computers about every 5 years or so just to keep up to date, but I don't see my MBP letting me down before then, either physically or in terms of capability.
The last few generations of apple intel products have had a shelf life, mostly due to the 64bit transition; Hopefully that's a thing of the past.

I hope to be getting a decent bit of money back for it, even after those four or five years.
Click to expand...

Got a MPB and a Old Mac laptop just to have for normal use 12 years and still kicking.
 
jaynm26 said:
PC's maybe Apple makes some pretty solid laptops that have great lifespans and durability
Click to expand...

Yeah....but even Mac-based systems always had their top performance computers as desktops/towers...not laptops.
Like I said....there are pretty powerful laptops out there from most manufacturers...I'm just saying that given the option, most of the very high-end performance systems tend NOT to be laptops.

AFA longevity....my original DAW tower is 12 years old...still runs like new, and because it is a purpose-built DAW and not an every-day computer...it is still faster than some more current computer models.
I also bet it's still running strong 10 years from now. :)

Same thing with the second DAW tower I just put into service.

Unlike most folks, I avoid upgrades like the plague.
The only time I see a need for an upgrade is when the current system is not doing what I need it to do, but a lot of people just upgrade for the sake of the upgrade, which often forces a lot of things to be changed/reconfigured in order to keep pace with the computer upgrade.
My DAW systems do exactly what I need them to do...so I don't see a reason to upgrade at this point. The second system I put in service is certainly nothing current, it's just a bit more current than my other DAW.
I mainly got it as a backup (or now the older one will be the backup) so that I wouldn't ever have to build a new system from scratch under the gun if the other stopped working.
I only recently upgraded the actual DAW application...which I didn't have to, as my older version worked fine and I had it all wired....now of course I'm having to learn some of the differences, but it's OK, I just didn't want to fall too far behind with the main DAW application.

My original DAW still runs W2K....and on my "newer" DAW, I'm running XP...and have ZERO desire to move up to Win 7 or 8. I only did the second system as Win XP because a few additional plugs/apps that I purchased were not W2K compatible, but now all my apps are set, and I'm probably not buying any more software for a long time. I can still use my basic DAW on the old system as a backup...so no need to take that system out of commission. I also bought more of the same A/D/A hardware for the second system...so I can swap between them if I ever needed to.
My A/D/A hardware is all PCI-based on both DAWs, so if I started upgrading too much AFA new computers, I will end up having to rebuild my entire DAW system from scratch, just to keep pace (there's not much PCI out there anymore)....and I ain't about to drop a pile of cash just to change out 24 + 24 channels of A/D/A just so I can have Win 7/8 and something more newer that at the end of the day does pretty much exactly the same thing my current two systems already do. ;)
 
Desktops are far from dead in professional recording environments. laptops can be useful in the studio for certain applications, but still no cigar as the only system. Home recordists tend to be more influenced by non-recording related applications, like gaming, general computer use, etc. If you're serious about recording you'll have a dedicated desktop based DAW for studio use only.

miroslav offers good advice. My computer systems are similar... also PCI buss mastering audio interfaces. Can't beat it.
 
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