Help a Noob!!! Mac: upgrade, buy new, use external stuff?

[moosetim]

Hi.

You can see the wicked awesome powerful junk I'm running by reading my signature.

I'm a bright lad who is of the ever-expanding "super-capable using technology but clueless about what technical specs really mean" demographic. Newly using Live 6 for live-looping and performance (all vocal), running it on my RAWKing laptop and it poops artifacts. I figured this would happen. I'm sending signal in an Mbox 2 (usb) or Alesis Firewire mixer. Lots of tracks (anywhere from 5-25), I'd love to be able to have effects, internal in Live and external, without it turning grainy and fading away.

What I want to know is:

Of all the GHz/MB/KB/GB numbers so kindly provided by every computer company in the world, which are the ones that matter when it comes to running LIVE? Can someone give me basic explanations or better yet, give me a 'get lots of this and the other doesn't matter' kind of anwer?

I need to be able to weigh my options - do I try to upgrade my laptop, can I attach an external drive that will make it work, should I haul my G5 around, would a mac mini or imac be a viable option, should I mortgage the house and get a macbook pro... ? I know there is will be ideal answers but I want to know practical - can I make this work with what I've got? If not, what are the quickest and cheapest solutions?

Keep in mind that I know little about tech although I'm fairly adept at computers in general (you should see how fast I compose emails! At, like, 5 GHz a minute!)

Thanks in advance!

[leisuremuffin]

well, your g5 could use some more memory, and your macbook g4 could use more cpu juice.



you can certainly make it work with what you have, but i'll bet the laptop is crawling. I know mine is and it's slightly faster than yours. Your g5 is probably fine, right? But at least a gig of memory is always a good idea.


get a new macbook (not pro) maybe? iMac isn't a bad idea at all, but not the easiest thing to lug around if your about doing live shows. (of course it's a lot easier to lug around that the shitload of hardware that it and live replaces...)




not sure if i'm really answering your question, but both cpu and memory are important factors. Live needs a bunch of both to be happy.





.lm.


oh, and i voted for ewok village.

[Machinesworking]

Sell the G5 and 1Ghz ibook then get a new macbook.

The G5 would be enough if you don'bt want to play virtual instruments live etc. and are going to basically DJ with the ibook. If you have plug ins that are not Universal Binary this is the way to go, otherwise consolidate and get a macbook.