Good Laptop choice for Live 3??

JazzT · Post by **JazzT** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 5:34 am

Hi there guys, I wanna know if a Powerbook G4 500 with 512 ram and 20 Gb HD is good enoguh for Live 3 and reason...
Any one use it??

Thanks in advance

JazzT
http://www.jazzt.net
http://www.soundclick.com/jazzt

dirtystudios · Post by **dirtystudios** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 7:48 am

i had a 400, and it ran fine with live 2, but it was pretty sluggish if i used reason alongside it.

k

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 2:57 pm

i have a 550, it's not bad. it does the job.
i work for an apple reseller, and the new ibooks perform SO much better i'm considering "upgrading" to an ibook

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 11:34 pm

i hate what i'm about to say....

as much as i want a mac laptop
buy a pc laptop if you want to run live smoothly.

sort of a good nes bad news thing

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 11:38 pm

Anonymous wrote:i have a 550, it's not bad. it does the job.
i work for an apple reseller, and the new ibooks perform SO much better i'm considering "upgrading" to an ibook

hah that's funny. i say wait for the g5 books.

matias · Post by **matias** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 4:16 am

i have to agree with dpel, laptops just dont cut it, i gig quite frequently n travel n i use a rack mounted pc and a tft screen along with a host of other rack units, all the power, kan still use my 001, and eats laptops, alittle more baggage, but well worth the effort n soo soo much cheaper, to rack mount a pc costs $700 AUS, tft screen the same... my advice, dont get a laptop n rack mount ure current pc or mac...wikd

matias

Euca Production House, QLD

lunabass · Post by **lunabass** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:32 am

matias wrote:i have to agree with dpel, laptops just dont cut it, i gig quite frequently n travel n i use a rack mounted pc and a tft screen along with a host of other rack units, all the power, kan still use my 001, and eats laptops, alittle more baggage, but well worth the effort n soo soo much cheaper, to rack mount a pc costs $700 AUS, tft screen the same... my advice, dont get a laptop n rack mount ure current pc or mac...wikd

matias

Euca Production House, QLD

Hey matias,

I've been thinking about rack mounting my mac and tft screen also. Did you use a premade rack or did you make something to suit your needs?
Do you have your pc & tft in the same rack?
any photos?

Apologies on highjacking your thread JazzT

Wol

matias · Post by **matias** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 3:52 pm

ay, good to c another auzzie, ere, wikd, im using a premade rack case i picked up from Musiclab ere in brissie, i dont ave ne pix atm, but i just a frefabed comp rack case bout 700buks, and the tft screen sits on top while i play, ill try n get some pix....

matias

Euca Production House, QLD

nickw · Post by **nickw** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 9:03 am

If you are looking to rack mount a mac then look at marathoncomputer.com, they do everything you would need.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 4:26 pm

matias wrote:i have to agree with dpel, laptops just dont cut it, i gig quite frequently n travel n i use a rack mounted pc and a tft screen along with a host of other rack units, all the power, kan still use my 001, and eats laptops, alittle more baggage, but well worth the effort n soo soo much cheaper, to rack mount a pc costs $700 AUS, tft screen the same... my advice, dont get a laptop n rack mount ure current pc or mac...wikd

matias

Euca Production House, QLD

definitely cheaper than laptops, but pc laptops are getting some ridiculous specs and prices are dropping at very fast rates. Gateway now has a 17.1" screen laptop with 80 gig hd, dvd burner, 512 RAM (up to 2 GIGS RAM IN A LAPTOP!!!), and 3.06 HT P4 chip for under $2000!!!! Sweet. Laptops can definietely cut it, but obviously cost more. I would kill for the extra two tracks a 17" screen would offer in the session view over my 15" screen, oh well.

matias · Post by **matias** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 12:44 am

very tru, but honestly the only laptop which ive used which works is the sony viao, very stable, most other laptops have big problems, big big problems, still if u kan go out n spend 6g on a laptop go for it, but u kould spend money more wisely by rackmounting pcs etc etc, + they kan keep up with the times in terms of upgrades for motherboards/ram etc..... each to their own

matias

Euca Production House, QLD

pa.101 · Post by **pa.101** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 2:53 am

Anybody with the latest PowerBooks using Live, live? Obviously my PIII-800mhz PC with only 128MB of RAM performs very sluggishly--the UI is not responsive enough to do interesting stuff in real-time. Sometimes I have a hard time even just triggering clips, with the mouse cursor not moving smoothly. I wonder how the 1GHz and 1.25GHz PowerBooks perform.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 3:09 am

pa.101 wrote:Anybody with the latest PowerBooks using Live, live? Obviously my PIII-800mhz PC with only 128MB of RAM performs very sluggishly--the UI is not responsive enough to do interesting stuff in real-time. Sometimes I have a hard time even just triggering clips, with the mouse cursor not moving smoothly. I wonder how the 1GHz and 1.25GHz PowerBooks perform.

better but still slower than any modern PC laptop. i'm not hatin'. that's the truth. if you're looking for raw speed and can put up with windows, then PCs are better for the money.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 3:34 am

Get a PC lappie along with a decent soundcard and an external drive. More bang for your buck, more throughput power, Live runs better with XP than OSX (read other threads), more choice of plugins to mangle your mixes and use that extra power, more choice of other hosts to indulge yourself with.

Although not my first choice I am using a Compaq Presario 2100 with AMD XP2200 cpu, 1Ghz RAM, external Firewrie hard disk, MidiSport 2x2, Echo Indigo along with both Live and Logic v5.51 and the whole setup performs fabulously. No problems whatsoever. Low latency for triggering VSTI's into Live through Bidule and loads of processing available for running effects/etc. No special tweaking, XP straight out of the box along with latest drivers (the supplied ATI graphic drivers hpwever were appaling and screwed things up at first). With some of the difference in saving I bought a 17 inch flat screen monitor to mono or dual screen with the lappie and that works great too. It also provides a better display than the laptops offering.

If I wanted to moce to Logic 6 then I would have to get a Mac. This time may come but at present, personally, there is no need as if I can't make music with this setup and the tools I have available already I may as well give up anyway. As beautiful as OSX and Macs are unless you have a specific need that a Mac caters for there is no need whatsoever to go to the extra expense. Any brand PC lappie I've setup in recent times along with components that are tried and tested work just as well and for many people, with Live for example, even better. In fact, in Live's case better by a country mile.

This is not in any way "anti-Mac", I have two here. But as far as laptops and running Live on them goes. 1) Live runs better on a PC (no matter who's "fault" it is) and Ableton themselves have even stated this. 2) With audio as much throughput as you can get is almost always needed and again in this area PC lappies deliver when compared to their Apple counterparts at present. The audio in OSX is effectively still being beta-tested as well jusdging by current "anomolies" that are being ironed out looking at various forums on the web.

At this point someone will come along and point out that Mac lappies are "in fact" no more expensive than their PC counterparts. DO the sums yourself. Look at which platform people are having problems with using Live the most and the best of luck with whichever platform you choose. People aren't saying thy are happier running Live on a PC just because they have nothing better to do.. well some may but then some Macheads think Steve Jobs should be the next Pope.

pa.101 · Post by **pa.101** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:34 pm

So what is a good PC laptop for live audio? By good I mean the best balance between portability and performance?