Which laptop to buy for production and live performance?

[balonny]

In due time I hope to get a new laptop to boost my production and performance capabilities.
From your experience what would you say is worth buying?
Thank you for any suggestion/opinion..

[Dragonbreath]

You cant go wrong with a macbook pro. I suggest the 15" model.

Stability and long life. I have had mine for the almost 5 years now and still working great.

[Khazul]

MBP - whatever screen size you can live with. Had mine for nearly 3 years now (Feb 2011 MBP 17), and its still like new and not much slower then current best models (was the fastest at the time I got it) and I can see it remaining useful for another couple of years at least unless something drastic happens with available CPU performance and CPU demands of software.

Maintenance is minimal - backup to time machine and that's it. OS actually upgrade generally and don't leave everything hosed anmd as a laptop it actual works for audio (and works well - even works well running windows 7/64 for audio as well as OSX)

[LKB3rd]

I went with a Windows laptop at first, and it worked ok. But glitchy little problems seemed to keep rearing their ugly heads. Sold it and got a Macbook Pro (I got a 13 inch) and I feel foolish for not knowing about how much better they are before. Works great.
If you are tight on cash, and not planning to use it live(aka crashes are ok every now and again), a Windows machine will work. I'd research it carefully and make sure you get one that people report success with. But if you can scrounge up the cash and want reliability, get a mac.

[102455]

Unfortunately I can see this thread degenerating into a PC vs Mac debate before too long, going by some of the comments so far...

"Macs are all so reliable and stable. PCs always crash". Soon we'll be seeing the old favourite "Macs don't get viruses" again. Such fun.

[beats me]

Unfortunately I can see this thread degenerating into a PC vs Mac debate before too long, going by some of the comments so far...

"Macs are all so reliable and stable. PCs always crash". Soon we'll be seeing the old favourite "Macs don't get viruses" again. Such fun.

Unless the OP says they’d get a Mac but they really can’t afford it.









At which point we’ll tell them to save up until they can afford a Mac.

[jestermgee]

To chime in on this because I am interested in looking at a new laptop also.

I use Win7 64bit on a dedicated i7 system and have had few issues and my old laptop is not capable of running Live anymore.

I am not a windows or mac fan but a fan of what gets the job done.

MBP seems like a great choice for a dedicated mobile work station but what are the experiences of managing sets, VSTs and content between 2 different OS's? I haven't the first clue about the mac workings.

[Dragonbreath]

There isnt any issues transfering a set from mac to pc as long as the ableton version are the same and the same plugins are on both. Of course collect and save

[Earwax69]

For a laptop I would indeed get a macbook pro. The sound card will be more reliable than pc laptops. However for home I would get a good i7 PC with the biggest screen you can afford. Working on a laptop is quite bad.

Downside of macbook pro is that Retina is not the best (slower graphics, solved parts and HDD) and stuff like Youtube drain the battery way faster than on PC. No idea why. However the trackpad is really great. You might be better using a mouse though..! Ho yes, and it's overpriced. Really.

Still it's better than the PC laptops competition. At least with desktops you can build yourself a nice machine.

[102455]

The sound card will be more reliable than pc laptops.

Wow, now there's a sweeping statement!

I thought that Macs used Intel High Definition Audio, the same as PCs.

I also thought that Macs were manufactured by Quanta (who claim that "one out of every three laptop PCs in the world" is made by them), Pegatron/Asus and the like.

Here's another sweeping statement: Macs are made of PCs.

[Timbeaux]

Here's another sweeping statement: Macs are made of PCs.

Yeah i've heard some rumors of it. *thumbs up


I would spend the money for a dektop and a laptop. It should be affordable with this equation:

€(windesktop)+€(winlaptop) = €(MBP)


And there is also a possibility to install osx on a "normal" laptop.

[PantsDown]

Maybe they are built with PC bits by manufacturers who make PCs but the fact of the matter is the build quality is second to none. Ive never owned a non apple laptop that hasnt felt plasticky or battered or worn within a relatively short period.

Macbook Pros IN GENERAL are solid machines... the new retina pros have NO MOVING PARTS (cept the fans) they are more able to put up with being slung into a bag and set up in a club etc... they are expensive... maybe too expensive but you get what you pay for!

An no they arent perfect and do crash sometimes.... but thats the key word.. Sometime! no where near as often as PCs..

Buy Cheap buy twice!

Just my opinion tho...

[re:dream]

I agree with the MBP advice but... If you get a windows laptop, check for DPC latency.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

You can get very solid PC laptops with awful latency. But if the latency monitor gives it a clean bill of health, you can get some very good deals.

[Dragonbreath]

The sound card will be more reliable than pc laptops.

Wow, now there's a sweeping statement!

I thought that Macs used Intel High Definition Audio, the same as PCs.

I also thought that Macs were manufactured by Quanta (who claim that "one out of every three laptop PCs in the world" is made by them), Pegatron/Asus and the like.

Here's another sweeping statement: Macs are made of PCs.

I think your missing the point. Mac are made from part that can be found in other Pcs, but what makes a mac a mac is the selection of specific parts and how they interact with each other. You hackintosh a PC laptop but it still wont be equal with a mac. In a mac the OS and the hardware and design to work together. PC's are kinda of frankenstein were you patch together parts made by people who dont speak to each other. A Mac is in the strict sense a PC (personal computer).

[Khazul]

I think your missing the point. Mac are made from part that can be found in other Pcs, but what makes a mac a mac is the selection of specific parts and how they interact with each other.

This I think is what makes the big difference. If I run Live on my 2011 MBP under window 7/64 on bootcamp then its nearly as good as on OSX on the same hardware.

You hackintosh a PC laptop but it still wont be equal with a mac. In a mac the OS and the hardware and design to work together. PC's are kinda of frankenstein were you patch together parts made by people who dont speak to each other. A Mac is in the strict sense a PC (personal computer).

I have found consistent and measurable small differences between running live on OSX on my MBP and running live under windows 7/64 bootcamp on my MBP (repeatable with a variety of RME and NI audio interfaces). Broadly performance when not under heavy load is similar. I think for the apps and plugins that I use, OSX is quite a bit more reliable. When under heavy audio load, then I have found OSX to be able to handle higher audio load than windows before breakup of sound (but the difference is small). OSX might start getting a little sluggish in the UI, but continue to yield reliable audio whereas windows might breakup the audio and continue to give good UI responsiveness (not much use for audio if tweaking a control causes crackles...). Some of these differences may be down to live rather than the OS. I suspect the OS only because similar but far more extreme biases can be found with Cubase (but that is known to be horrible on OSX). Also logic's UI suffers badly under extreme audio load, yet the audio remains reliable.

Also OSX has some built in features that make running multiple audio apps with midi sync easy to setup and similar with connecting in MIDI from iPads etc over WiFi. - these are all extra plusses for me. I happen to like the multi-touch track pads etc well along with the gestures in OSX and the way full screen apps work and the ease of sliding between them (Live + Traktor synced via midi for eg). Similar is achievable on windows with a bunch of 3rd party downloads of course assuming they down all bring the machine to its knees.

For gaming however, I prefer a windows box (or even windows on the MBP instead of OSX on the MBP) - UI responsiveness and graphic performance just feels better. In the end a good quality laptop with good components and a BIOS that doesn't screw up interrupts etc (well DPC on windows - I don't know what the equiv on OSX is) is going to be decent on either OS. Likewise I suspect badly chosen hardware will be problematic on either OS. Maybe for audio, OSX kernel and drivers might actually be better and tolerate bad hardware better where windows might do a better job of graphic on a cheap laptop - I have no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Now is there was a PC laptop maker who could consistently make laptop to the overall quality that apple manage to spec, then far more of us would probably be using PCV laptops with windows. I even know some DJs who have use MBP but run ONLY windows on them - they don't like OSX UI, but love the hardware and its reliability (has to be said one of them was moaning about a recent release of traktor being unreliable on windows and since trying out OSX because of that and finding it solid again - I think that was NI's fault however).

Over the last 3 years Ive had an MBP (first apple machine since a 2gs back in the 80s) I really only use my windows desktop for gaming and software development now. All email, documents, spreadsheet etc is done on OSX using apples apps as they start up quickly and do whats needed and I barely touch office apps these days (despite using it at work). TBH I find the OSX finder a bit primitive is some ways compared to the windows shell, but overall machine maintenance and management seem far easier on OSX despite that I really don't know OSX under the hood like I do windows (Im a C++/C# windows programmer by day). I hate iTunes on windows, but on OSX it what I use exclusively for casual music listening along with remote control,via iphone and ipad remote apps and actually quite like it especially as it scriptable (on OSX) and smart playlist stuff makes it really handy for sorting out tracks in traktor. Ie there is actually quite a lot to like on OSX once you get used to it. I still hate that the menu bar is separated from the application on OSX - Live on one screen and its damn menu bar on another - how f****** stupid is that these days?