Hi. I just started going to school in the city and am very much into audio recording. I use Pro Tools and have an mbox. Because of all the travel back and forth from school and home I have decided to look into getting a laptop to do my audio work on. Right now I have a P4 2.6 GHZ desktop with 512 mb ram and a single 120 gb hard drive. I would want something with at least the same performance. I've been looking at different laptops by toshiba, dell, compaq and even the mac powerbooks (these are just a little too pricey for me). One in particlar I've been looking at is a pentium m 1.73 GHZ with 1 gig ram and a 60 GB Hard drive (I want to buy an external fire wire drive for the audio). My only concern really is the Pentium m processor. Do you think this laptop would suffice or do you have any other suggestions? Thanks.
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I should point out that I will have to sell my desktop in order
I should point out that I will have to sell my desktop in order to afford the laptop. So I will need something that I can mix with as well. One concern I've had is that all the firewire ports on the laptops I've seen are 400 and not 800. So would this not defeat the purpose of an external firewire hard drive over USB? Although, I have had trouble finding out the firewire specs on most of the laptops I've looked at. Does anyone know if the dell or toshiba laptops have fire wire 800? Thanks and feel free to throw in some other brands that I should maybe look into.
Most PC laptops do not have FW800. I would still take FW400 ove
Most PC laptops do not have FW800.
I would still take FW400 over USB2.0
Theoretically USB2.0 is faster, but I've never seen it actually get there, and there seem to be a whole host of stability issues with USB2.0 for HD's. If you poke around here, you'll see many people posting problems with USB drives.
For recording, the processor should be no problem for reasonable
For recording, the processor should be no problem for reasonable number of tracks. I use a similar machine for 4 to 8 tracks at 88K without issues. It will do more, but I don't generally need to.
For mixing work, if you get into a lot of tracks and processing, you can always move things to your desktop if necessary. The P4 is better at floating point than the Pentium mobile processor, so it depends a bit on what kind of processing you are running.
Despite a lot of concern voiced by some about notebooks for field work, I find them easier to deal with in the field and have never had a problem (reliability-wise). If you think about it, PC makers design notebooks to be carried around and used in the field. I think they are better designed for this purpose than alternatives. Of course, you have to be using either a CardBus or 1394 interface...
Michael