Sony Vaio laptops are great...what do you need for extra hardware? Hmmm...well, that really depends on what you plan on recording and mixing and what other gear you have with the portable setup..do you bring a small mixer with you? outboard gear?
There are soooo many laptops out there...which one will work for you is really dependant on what you want to do with it..you will need an external hard drive if you plan on doing mulit-recording..external SCSI or Firewire will work just fine...Just stay away from Compaq or HP laptops..
There are numerous audio devices for laptops nowadays...MOTU 828(Firewire)..RME PCMCIA..Echo PCMCIA..Crest Firewire(In conjunction with Digital Harmony)..
Also are you using MIDI? to give you the best answer we need as much information as possible to help you out. Let me know and I'll answer your questions as best as possible..
Opus

Might also look into the USBpre from Sound Devices.

I also have a laptop its a Dell Latitude, 256 mg ram, 13 gig hard drive, CD writer, Pentium 650 Processor.......
I personally like something that is portable but study.... I recently did a project on a Sony (small thing)... and it was too pokey.... I like something I can throw around and its study to hell...... If you do go down the laptop route you need to get a tascam USB 428.... Type it in your search engine and check it out.... I would not be without it.... LOW LATENCY, FADERS etc etc..... Not a glitch !!!

Heidi xxxxxxxx

I've got an MPC which is the center of my entire studio which only consists of that mpc, a roland mc-307, and an late roland sound rack. I'm aware that laptops come with limited ins and outs so i need to know what type of hardware would allow me to setup such equipment say anywhere. I imagine i would need something with alot of gigs. Portable Mixer? I'm interested in purchasing the Roland VS-2480. I like the way that feels..if you call that portable. Bear with me i'm young! :)
Tnax

I would go that route if I were you..would make more sense for your style
Opus

Originally posted by Comusic:
I personally like something that is portable but study....

I would suggest if you are really looking for something study / rugged, check out Panasonics line of Laptops. My local police station is in the process of outfitting all cars with them. This may or may not be what you are looking for. But if you might possibly drop it say from 20ft. there is a great chance that anything else won't be left operational.

Originally posted by recordista:
Might also look into the USBpre from Sound Devices.

I just tried this unit out....IT SUCKS!!!!!! Sorry to be so blatently rude about it...but IT SUCKS!!!! :p
All it really supports is Direct X ...no ASIO..first mistake...next..it takes power from USB hub...second mistake..it has way too much on the box for Windows and Mac too handle..lame lame lame lame...latency is unbearable! Buddy of mine tried it on Pro Tools free and he said he sounded like Elvis with the delay going on!!! DONT GET THIS UNIT!!!!!
Opus

the only thing i've seen the usb pre used successfully was running smaart live or smaart pro in a live sound analysys operation
it was actually the best option.

just another $.02

By choosing Sony VAIO you may be relinquishing the option of recording on Pro Tools FREE, then later mixing (or adding tracks later) on ProTools LE in the studio.
Digidesign.com (see 'Compatibility') reports problems with Pro Tools on VAIOs.....

what do you mean grampoel? Explain what you said about pro tools for me again. Benefits of Vaio?

Another warning on Sony is that its iLink is porblematic with Motu 828. Not 1st hand experience but I've seen posts on rec.audio.pro and alt.music/4-track.

Also in reply to the compaq basher. The RME website has a lot of specifc notebook info and several Compaq models score high marks. Also for those considering firewire, the Compaq machines use TI chipsets which appear to have less problems than whatever Sony uses.