MINI LAPTOPS - any one using ???

[Ed J]

One of my laptops is a samsung q210: it's a proper machine, and you can pick them (or the newer equivalent) up for about £500 these days (I paid about £600).

Otherwise, Sony do quite nice small laptops that can take on the big boys power-wise.

[kraymon]

Im really interested in the possibility of running Ableton on one of these little machines (was looking at the new Dell mini 10) as I'm going travelling soon for 6 months and want to be able to sketch out some music.

If it can't do ableton (on XP) I guess the key is to use old software like Acid, designed for slower machines.

I've got a Dell mini 9 and it can do Ableton on XP - I'm running 8.1.3 using ASIO4ALL on the internal soundcard. As long as you stick to loops and the odd drum rack / operator and don't go mad with the effects, it works great as a sketchpad. Don't bother trying any of the modeling synths though (e.g. Tension) as they are a bit too much for the Atom CPU.

Incidentally, I also run Acid Pro on mine too, which is a lot lighter on CPU and can cope with more concurrent tracks.

anyone had an experience with the inspiron mini 1012?
looks great for the size / price.
Do you think it would be best to scrap Windows7 home on it and run XP for more performance?
I'd love to know if anyone runs ableton or any other music software on one of these...

[tecgen]

I used an Thinkpad x60s subnotebook for a while for programming an producing with Ableton. It's really tiny, has an 12 inch screen, a 1.66Ghz Core Duo processor and a huge battery. Its weight is around 1.5 kg.
Since for my latest track the 1.66 Ghz Core Duo CPU was not quite sufficient anymore, I brought the new Thinkpad x201 with i5-540M CPU (2.5 - 3Ghz). This was a great choice. It has plenty of power and is ultra portable. Since I only use ableton on this machine and ableton only in fullscreen mode, it wouldn't matter for me if the operation system is Windows 7 or Mac OS.


Thinkpad x201 test:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.a ... D=5546&p=2

Thinkpad x60s test:
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo- ... 86426.html


Greetings
Marco

[kraymon]

ibm looks good but thats a proper laptop with a proper price tag!
the dell netbooks are just over 200, which is enticing.