please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

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McQ714
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by McQ714 » Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:38 pm

sony and HP both use very successful recording artists to promote their laptops.

what's Apple got? a couple of jokers. good job Apple!!!

leedsquietman
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by leedsquietman » Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:52 pm

The main consideration with PC laptops is either use USB 2.0 audio interfaces, or find a laptop which has it's expresscard buss seperate from all the other integrated functions on it's ricoh/o2/ene/agere etc. chipsets and then use an expresscard to firewire card with a Texas Instruments chipset, the ones made by SIIG are especially good in my experience.

However, almost any laptop under about $1200 is likely to have total integration of everything (including expresscard buss) on one chipset, meaning the expresscard to firewire adapter will not give any advantage. In which case, consider USB 2.0 interfaces.

The main thing to do is wipe all the crap (i.e. do a fresh install of windows and drivers, killing all the trialware and crapware that HP, Sony, Toshiba and Dell in particular bundle) and then pretty much any of the laptops with a little bit of tweaking (10 mins using the DPC latency checker is a good tool, usually disabling wifi/ethernet/CD-DVD driver will massively reduce system latency) should run just fine. I have a Dell XPS M1530 and love it, but Toshiba, Lenovo, SOny, HP - I have friends running these and they get on just fine.

So I would suggest he check out specs, looks, and find whichever suits him best, there is little to choose between the models, even Acers !
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

piZMo
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by piZMo » Sat Sep 04, 2010 3:26 pm

what about this?


COMPAQ Presario CQ62-221sa £329 http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-cq62-2 ... 5-pdt.html
Intel® Celeron® Processor 900
- 2.2 GHz
- 800MHz FSB
- 1MB L2 Cache
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium

2GB installed DDR3 RAM
- 4GB maximum RAM capacity

Intel® HD Graphics
- up to 762 MB total available graphics memory

Widescreen LCD
- WXGA
- 1366 x 768 pixels
Screen size 15.6"
LED backlighting
BrightView technology (glossy screen)

Hard drive 250GB SATA 7200rpm

Optical disk drive LightScribe SuperMulti DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support

USB 3 x USB 2.0 ports

Modem/Ethernet Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n

Video interface VGA

Audio interface 1 stereo headphone-out

1 microphone-in

TV output VGA

Battery 6-cell Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery

Accessories included Power cable, AC adapter, battery, documentation

Size Height: 246mm

Width: 374mm

Depth: 32mm

Weight 2.5 kg

specs look pretty good for the money, but what are compaqs like in field? anyone with experience on this one?

leedsquietman
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by leedsquietman » Sat Sep 04, 2010 4:03 pm

No, Compaqs are OK but you need more than a Celeron processor to run audio apps efficiently.

You should consider an i3 processor at least, and preferably an i5 or i7.

Also a MINIMUM of 4GB ram, preferably 6GBs with win 7 64 bit/
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

martinkellogs
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by martinkellogs » Sat Sep 04, 2010 4:09 pm

edited
Last edited by martinkellogs on Wed Jan 19, 2011 6:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

piZMo
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by piZMo » Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:03 pm

Intel® Celeron® Processor 900
stupid i missed that, though it was core2duo, damn it. ok thanks.

xuoham
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by xuoham » Sun Sep 05, 2010 5:10 pm

Do you know ADK, in the USA ?
Got my PC laptop from them, very serious laptop dedicated to audio, no hicups, very robust. Just read what they have to say and you'll feel sorry to buy a laptop from a big company. After a bit of customizing (ssd drive, ...) i ended up with a very strong and reliable machine, for less than the price of a Macbook pro. And with lifetime support.

leedsquietman
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by leedsquietman » Mon Sep 06, 2010 2:41 am

Yes, very good but also expensive and not necessarily worth the extra expense - wipe the HD and do a clean install of windows and find a laptop which does not have firewire integrated with the firewire and sd card chipset allowing you to use an expresscard to firewire with TI chipset, and you basically have 95% of an ADK laptop for significantly less money.

However, if you don't like to mess about reinstalling windows and tweaking a few drivers in control panel and cannot find a laptop with a seperate expresscard buss (and it's more common to not be able to and find a totally cheap everything on one chipset) then it makes sense to spend a bit extra and get the ADK 'it just works' type laptop.

Scott from ADK is a good guy and knowledgeable, but remember, they are selling a product for PROFIT just like Dell and Sony etc., so their website is a bit over alarmist and biased in their favour, which is no surprise as that's how business works.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

xuoham
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by xuoham » Mon Sep 06, 2010 4:35 am

leedsquietman wrote: Scott from ADK is a good guy and knowledgeable, but remember, they are selling a product for PROFIT just like Dell and Sony etc., so their website is a bit over alarmist and biased in their favour, which is no surprise as that's how business works.
:lol:
Yeah, i hear you, you're right.
But nevertheless it is not that expensive, since a laptop with separate firewire is not the cheapest anyway. And as you say, i pay for the no brainer benefit, and tiny details that assure me i'll go a long way : good thermal paste, quiet fans, braided cables, bios tweak (though i have no clue what is really tweaked), life time support.
Again, for less that a Macbook pro. But hey, i' biased now anyway :D

piZMo
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by piZMo » Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:38 pm

would an i3 be enough processor?

he will be using it for home use, and with a DVS. i found this HP G62 for the money he wants to spend.
ProcessorType Intel® Core™ i3-330M Processor
ProcessorSpeed 2.13 GHz
RAMMemory 2 GB DDR3
HardDiskCapacity 250 GB SATA 7200rpm
CDDVDDriveType LightScribe DVD±R/RW
DimensionsWxHxD 34.2 x 3.65(max) x 22.8cm
ScreenSize 15.6" diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display
Weight 2.2 kg
ConnectionPorts 1 VGA port 1 HDMI port 1 stereo headphone-out 1 microphone-in 3 USB 2.0 ports 1 RJ45 ethernet port
Warranty Manufacturers 1 Year
OperatingSystem Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
OtherFeatures Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN 802.11 b/g/n; Bluetooth® wireless networking

leedsquietman
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by leedsquietman » Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:43 pm

This should be fine, so long as the RAM is upped to 4GB min and the end user is going to run a USB 2.0 interface because firewire won't be up to much (as is the case for most laptops under $1600).

2GB ram with win 7 (or vista) is a bit on the low side, it will work but it will probably be cheaper to upgrade it now with the HP configurator (esp. if it only has 2 ram slots and they're BOTH being used with 1GB ram sticks). 4GB will give you much better performance, especially if you plan on running a lot of tracks and sample streaming.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

AceLuby
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by AceLuby » Tue Sep 07, 2010 2:13 pm

I went w/ something along these lines with a firewire interface:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4948

It would be less than a grand total and you'd have a really good laptop system IMO. This is what I've been rocking for a year and have no regrets about my purchase.
levimoniz wrote:yes i'm a hypocrite and not intelligent

araz
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Re: please recommend my friend a PC laptop for audio

Post by araz » Tue Sep 07, 2010 3:02 pm

MacGuffin wrote:my Dell Studio 15 works pretty good for me...
+1
1080p LED screen, backlite keyboard, slot DVD, ...

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