new simple laptop (PC) based system

[Hard2Hear]

No power at all on any cardbus or express cards. Its not in the wiring. Most of them have their own dc converter that can be plugged into the card to provide power, but I really don't see the point in that.

 

[LI_Slim]

If you are not going to wipe the hard drive and install XP, then by all means, get 4GB Ram for Vista.

I would also spend the extra money for the fastest CPU you can afford.

The T9300 2.5 Ghtz is exceptional. Far more powerful, and far less energy required! But the price goes up a lot from where you are presently looking.

Do I really need all that RAM to record about two channels at a time and mix about a half dozen?

I'm sure if I spent $3000 instead of $1100 on this set up I could get better equipment. Hell, if I spent $10,000 it would be awesome. But I venture to say that for my purposes very few people will be able to tell any difference between the Audi and the Civic.

 

[Hard2Hear]

Exactly. Unless you're heavy into multisamplers like Kontakt, EastWest, etc, 2GB will be plenty for everything you'll ever do.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Yeah, Im running 2gb too. I dont have much in the way of ram eating stuff, except maybe drumagog, but thats not much

 

[RWhite]

Here's a stupid question: why firewire over USB2? On paper USB2 is faster than firewire.

 

[Hard2Hear]

Burst speed vs sustained transfer.

Try recording just 4 streams and playing back 2 over USB at 24/44.1.

26+ is no problem for Firewire.

Reality and paper are very different.

 

[Toddskins]

4 GB Ram

You stated from the beginning you are getting the Vista OS.

2 GB is just about enough to surf the web and open a word processing application in Vista, but not audio recording. Even 2 tracks.

To upgrade to 4GB Ram should only cost $70. Of course you should. I did not tell you to spend thousands.

And if you can, the upgrade to a better CPU should always be considered. Not a jump by $400, but if for an extra $180 you can get the processor up a couple notches, I would.

 

[Epicureous]

You stated from the beginning you are getting the Vista OS.

2 GB is just about enough to surf the web and open a word processing application in Vista, but not audio recording. Even 2 tracks.

To upgrade to 4GB Ram should only cost $70. Of course you should. I did not tell you to spend thousands.

And if you can, the upgrade to a better CPU should always be considered. Not a jump by $400, but if for an extra $180 you can get the processor up a couple notches, I would.

2gigs is just fine for recording; with a firewire interface 26 tracks worth of fine... The only time 2 gigs wouldn't be enough is if you wanted to run effects on every track... Plus 4 gigs is only useful if you're running 64bits, 32bits can't utilize 4gigs; which basically means you'd have 1 gig of ram in you computer that is completely useless... I'm not sure if that was just an error and you meant 3gigs would be recommended...

 

[pipelineaudio]

I wouldnt try and run vista on 2 gigs

or 4

Vista 32 just seems to be a completely worthless OS. All of the pitfalls and resource consumption of Vista with none of the benefits.

You dont just need ram for fx (in fact many fx dont use much ram at all) you need ram for realtime edits, take histories, and especially sample based vst-is

Going to vista 64 would give you the ability to use a lot more ram, possibly enough to make it as fast as xp and have loads left over, provided a substantial cpu upgrade over the one you have in xp

 

[RWhite]

I wouldnt try and run vista on 2 gigs

or 4

Vista 32 just seems to be a completely worthless OS. All of the pitfalls and resource consumption of Vista with none of the benefits.

You dont just need ram for fx (in fact many fx dont use much ram at all) you need ram for realtime edits, take histories, and especially sample based vst-is

Going to vista 64 would give you the ability to use a lot more ram, possibly enough to make it as fast as xp and have loads left over, provided a substantial cpu upgrade over the one you have in xp

Yes, and going to Vista 64 will give you the comfort of finding out that most of your hardware doesn't have 64 bit drivers.

 

[LI_Slim]

You stated from the beginning you are getting the Vista OS.

2 GB is just about enough to surf the web and open a word processing application in Vista, but not audio recording. Even 2 tracks.

To upgrade to 4GB Ram should only cost $70. Of course you should. I did not tell you to spend thousands.

And if you can, the upgrade to a better CPU should always be considered. Not a jump by $400, but if for an extra $180 you can get the processor up a couple notches, I would.

we shall see...

 

[Epicureous]

Yes, and going to Vista 64 will give you the comfort of finding out that most of your hardware doesn't have 64 bit drivers.

That's perfectly fine because 32bit software is allocated into 64bits so it can be split up into the ram (two set) and the processor...