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anonymous 28 May 2004

I'm about to pop for a new laptop and USB interface, and want to be able to play Reason synths live with MIDI. A 2.8GHz Pentium 4 is plenty fast but runs hot and has a short battery life (1.5 hrs or so). A 1.7 GHz Pentium M is about as fast for business apps, runs cooler and claims 3-5hr battery. But I'm worried about how Reason will run on it, particularly since it can slow down to under 1 GHz when running on battery. Anyone have experience running on a Pentium M (aka Centrino)?

Thanks! :D

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Kev Fri, 05/28/2004 - 15:16

I don't have detailed evidence on 2.8 and 1.7 with Reason.
I can see why you want to stay on the battery pack when playing live.

I think only experience can tell you that a michine will be suitable for your application. This can come down to configuration and additional software hardware issues.

Can a larger battery Pack be obtained for the faster machine ?

Is your USB interface Midi ... AND Audio ?

anonymous Fri, 05/28/2004 - 17:21

Yes, MIDI and audio. Good question about extended battery -- options are second battery or "universal." I've heard from people successfully running Reason on < 1 GHz laptops, and from pentium-m users who say that speedstep won't slow down apps just because its on battery, but no one yet who's actually playing a PM laptop. I've heard from several people getting less than one hour battery life from 2.8+ P4s.
In either case I'll upgrade the hard drive speed.

Thanks,

anonymous Wed, 06/02/2004 - 02:03

I picked up an Acer Travelmate 662Lci with a 1.5 Centrino and 512 RAM a month ago, and haven´t had a problem with it yet.
I have played it live using Lounge Lizard, B4, CS80 and other synths, and with my Firewire Audiophile I have no problems whatsoever playing them at 64 samples buffer size = 1,5 ms latency. The system is slightly optimized for audio, but I run DC++, mail, and play games all the time on it - still not a single pop or click in Cubase.
I bought it after reading about it on the DUC, Digidesign User Conference, it is apparently one of the better performers for PTLE in the Laptop division.

Last night I mixed a song with 30 tracks and lots of ultrafunk plugins and a couple of Waves RVerbs, it handled it just fine, and that being from the internal HD. Extremely stable machine.
Never had any problems with the shared video memory either, except for that Max Payne 2 runs sluggish at two specific occasions in the game at 1024X800.

I can do nothing but recommend it, pure quality! Luuuv it. 8) 8)

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