Help ! what laptop for using midi live

[tangerine]

I'm contemplating using a laptop and a breakout box live instead of lugging about a rack unit. A laptop is easier to take on a plane and can be carried as hand luggage so it costs less to carry than the rack. With the rack it could be left at Gatwick and we need it in Athens (That's happened before). So to overcome these pain in the arse drawbacks I'm seriously considering going down the laptop route, but then there is the whole issue of operating systems. Windows is dog shit, Mac OS 10 is great but doesn't support all my vst's, I'd love to use Linux but it doesn't support logic or cubase SX. I really need to give this some thought, has anyone got any sane and helpful suggestions?

[dementedchord]

i've been considering this myself and am not sure it's gonna work all that well... i keep hearing guys bitch about noises (floating ground issues) to where they have to run it off batteries for the show... keep me informed what you decide i keep vascillating... really would like to use vsti's (ivory+B4 mostly) one option i've considerd is one of these 1 space rackmount pcs with a separate rack for hot swap portable drives...

[tangerine]

We are having a play with an ATX board and compact flash drive, apparently boards with texas instruments chip sets are supposedly the best for handling M.I.D.I.
We are also looking at using linux with some sequencer applications that are compatible with this operating system. If we do go down the road of the lap top we will be using a terratec Phase 88 and a M-Audio 1814 firewire external device and a stereo DI to ground lift the signal if needed. one lap top will be on stage and the other at the mixing desk these will be synced up via a LAN connection, wether or not we go with wi fi or one huge LAN cable I don't know. This stuff has to be small enough to take on a plane to avoid the drawbacks I mentioned. We will be having a play over the next couple of weeks so I'll keep you posted.

[tangerine]

Originally Posted by dementedchord

i've been considering this myself and am not sure it's gonna work all that well... i keep hearing guys bitch about noises (floating ground issues) to where they have to run it off batteries for the show... keep me informed what you decide i keep vascillating... really would like to use vsti's (ivory+B4 mostly) one option i've considerd is one of these 1 space rackmount pcs with a separate rack for hot swap portable drives...

Have a look at this, it looks promising
http://createdigitalmusic.com/tag/trinity/

[dementedchord]

thnx for the link.. i just bookmarked it... i'll check it out later...