Choosing a laptop to use as a recording rig

valacirca

New member
I'm currently eyeing an Acer Aspire 4740 (specs below) --- would anyone have any thoughts regarding this? Use will be mostly for amateur audio recording stuff via Reaper, which I use with several amp/cab modeling plugins (because my current *old* 1.6Ghz Pentium-M Twinhead laptop crashes under too much audio processing). Of course there's also the mandatory use for surfing, watching videos, listening to music and maybe the occasional game or two.

I'm new to this Intel Core i3/5/7 thing. It seems to be fast, affordable and I haven't heard anything against its reliability. Is it all that?

Processor
Intel® Core i5-430M processor (3 MB L3 cache, 2.26 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.53 GHz, DDR3 1066 MHz, 35 W), supporting Intel® 64 architecture, Intel® Smart Cache

Chipset
Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset

Screen
14" HD Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD, 16:9 aspect ratio, 8 ms response time

RAM
2GB DDR3, upgradeable to 8 GB using two soDIMM modules (for 64-bit OS)

Storage
500GB HDD

Optical Drive
DVD SuperMulti Double Layer Drive

Communication
Integrated Bluetooth, Integrated Wireless WiFi Link 802.11b/g/Draft-N, Gigabit Ethernet, Wake-on-LAN ready, 56K ITU V.92 with PTT approval12, Wake-on-Ring ready

I/O Interfaces
5-in-1 Media Reader ; HDMI™ port with HDCP support

Graphic
512 MB nVidia GeForce G310M of dedicated DDR3 VRAM, supporting NVIDIA® CUDA™, PhysX™, PureVideo® HD technology, OpenEXR High Dynamic-Range (HDR) technology, Shader Model 4.0, Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1

Audio
3rd Generation Dolby Home Theater, True5.1-channel surround sound output, featuring Dolby® Digital Live, Dolby® Headphone, Dolby® Pro Logic® IIx, Dolby® Audio Optimization, Dolby® High Frequency Enhancer technologies, Dolby® Natural Bass and Dolby® Sound Space Expander

WebCam
Acer Crystal Eye High-Def webcam
 
There are 3 main things you need to look at when using a laptop for recording that i have had to find out the hard way!!! lol

1. Make Sure it has Firewire with a Texas Instruments Chipset

2. If it doesn't have firewire, make sure it has an upgrade card slot to add one, the new card MUST be a Texas Instruments chipset and ONLY get a firewire 400 unless the device yuo are connecting specificly says otherwise. A lot of complications with that one!!!

3. Make sure you can install a 2nd hard drive either internally or via an ESata port. You DO NOT want to be recording on the same drive as your system is running on.

So yeah, thats my big 3 :D

I'm yet to see how far i can push my expresscard. I'm getting my 2nd Motu 8pre next week that i'm going to daisychain to my first which will take me up to 16 input channels :D

Anyway, hope this was helpful.
 
I have an acer 7530g with a TI firewire expresscard running a motu 8pre (and in a few weeks it'll be 2 motu 8pre's!)

I fitted a nice fast Sata Drive in the spare drive bay inside and use that to record onto, keeping my system drive seperate.

Specs on the actual laptop are AMD 2.2ghz dual core, 3gb ram, etc.

Oh, and that's running on Win XP Pro SP3 (up to date) 32 Bit, with Sonar 8 Producer Edition (latest patch)

Let me know if any of you have any problems with your laptop setup because mine has not been easy to do!!! A good start is NOT to use Windows 7, for starters its a completely unnecessary resource eater!!!
 
I run a Lenovo T400 off recommendations from others. It works wonderfully. Now, the T410 is out and I believe the lowest model even comes with i5. If you have $900+ to spend, definitely take a look at Lenovo. They are rocksolid. Just note that the FW on them is NO LONGER the TI chipset, so you would have to get a card for it.
 
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