success with laptops?

[Lorddiagram]

I am looking and it is a bit confusing. Who is having succes with a laptop setup?

What model are you using?

Does a P4 work as good as a Centrino?

How about an AMD 2400 or 2500?

Using an external firewire drive are you able to record 8 tracks at once?

Right now my home destop is a PII 600 and honestly it works pretty darn good. It seems that todays laptops should blaze - do they?

I am loooking to spend 1000 give or take a little.

Please help . . my paycheck is burning a hole in my pocket.



Thanks

lD

 

[brzilian]

I just bought a eMachines M5309 a few weeks back for $1200 with a $200 mail-in rebate.

http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_M5309

I am using the onboard SoundMAX card for now and have HS2004XL and FruityLoops installed. It seems to be working well so far, but I will definetly look into an external PCI or Firewire soundcard if I plan on doing any serious recording with it. Right now I'm just fooling around with quick compositions using DXi softsynths created by entering notes in step time.

The 15.4" widescreen display is particularly nice when I'm running HS2004. You can't beat the 3 USB 2.0 and 1 Firewire ports either. It has a 5,400 RPM Toshiba HD rather than a 4,200 RPM drive on most other laptops.

 

[sae]

I would stay away from emachines (although I have heard their quality has gotten better)

Preferable get something with dual monitor capability (which I am sure most have by now) it's nice to be able to drag your meters to another screen.

minimum 512 mb ram
I would go for a p4, AMD had some audio issues a while back you can use the search function to get a low down on AMD vs. Pentium, because there are enough of those threads.
Centrino might be ok too, but expect a little less payload per MHZ than a full blow p4.

As far as firewire is concerned, I think that a built in firewire port is better than a pcmcia (pc card) firewire card because pcmcia does not have the bandwidth that firewire has, so you might get some bottlenecks. I could be wrong though.

 

[Polaris20]

Originally posted by sae I would stay away from emachines (although I have heard their quality has gotten better)

Have you worked on them? I have. It sounds like you're listening to opinions formed 5 years ago.

Preferable get something with dual monitor capability (which I am sure most have by now) it's nice to be able to drag your meters to another screen.

minimum 512 mb ram
I would go for a p4, AMD had some audio issues a while back you can use the search function to get a low down on AMD vs. Pentium, because there are enough of those threads.
Centrino might be ok too, but expect a little less payload per MHZ than a full blow p4.

Yup, AMD had an issue with audio, in regards to the chipsets used. Again, about 4 or 5 years ago. They're fine now.

Centrinos (actually Pentium M's: Centrino is the whole package with wireless LAN etc.), per megahertz, accomplish far more per clock cycle than an inefficient P4. They are very good for audio, just like Athlons, which also accomplish more per clock cycle. I'm not saying P4's are bad, I am just setting the record straight on differences between processors. Centrinos are a lot more related to the older P3's (as are the Athlons) than the current P4's.

As far as firewire is concerned, I think that a built in firewire port is better than a pcmcia (pc card) firewire card because pcmcia does not have the bandwidth that firewire has, so you might get some bottlenecks. I could be wrong though.

I haven't seen a PCMCIA slot on a notebook for awhile. Most do have Cardbus slots though, which are over twice the bandwidth of firewire, running at 133MB/sec. That's megabytes, not bits.

I'd give a hard look at the eMachines books, especially the Athlon 64 based ones. Those are fantastic machines for the buck.

I also love my Gateway, who's manufacturer has treated me with fantastic service thus far.

 

[brzilian]

I would stay away from emachines (although I have heard their quality has gotten better)

Preferable get something with dual monitor capability (which I am sure most have by now) it's nice to be able to drag your meters to another screen.

minimum 512 mb ram
I would go for a p4, AMD had some audio issues a while back you can use the search function to get a low down on AMD vs. Pentium, because there are enough of those threads.
Centrino might be ok too, but expect a little less payload per MHZ than a full blow p4.

As far as firewire is concerned, I think that a built in firewire port is better than a pcmcia (pc card) firewire card because pcmcia does not have the bandwidth that firewire has, so you might get some bottlenecks. I could be wrong though.

Why don't you look things up before making stupid comments like that?

eMachines are very capable systems and I have not ran into any issues so far.

Please point out another laptop manufacturer that has the same specs I got in my 5309 that is comparable in price - I doubt you'll find it. Oh yeah, read up on their tech support as well - much better than the crappy service Dell has been providing lately...

FYI, the M5309 is capable of supporting up to 3 displays with its onboard ATI Radeon chipset (the 15.4" built in screen, an external VGA monitor and a S-Video hook up.

The M5309 also makes use of the Athlon 2500XP-M processor and I have not seen any issues with DAW apps. Based on this alone, I retract any previous comments I have made in this forum about AMD chips not being as capable as Pentium 4 processors.

As Polaris pointed out, you have no clue what you are talking about as far as the PC-Card bus. It is essentially the PCI interface with a different connector and is capable of upward of 133Mbytes/sec which still beats out Firewire 800.

 

[Polaris20]

Oh yeah, read up on their tech support as well - much better than the crappy service Dell has been providing lately...

Something that I believe will only get better, since Gateway bought them out.

My Gateway book had a screen problem, so it was sent out one Friday, and back to me, Airborne'd with a new screen the following Tuesday.

That's service.

 

[brzilian]

Something that I believe will only get better, since Gateway bought them out.

My Gateway book had a screen problem, so it was sent out one Friday, and back to me, Airborne'd with a new screen the following Tuesday.

That's service.

Just out of curiousity, what was wrong with the display?

 

[Polaris20]

Just out of curiousity, what was wrong with the display?

Loose connection in the wiring harness, causing the screen to black out depending upon the position of the screen relative to the keyboard, i.e. at a 90 degree angle it was fine, but at 45 degrees it would flicker off.

Shit happens, it's just a case of how often and how fast it's fixed, neither of which has been an issue with Gateway.