Tips on using a laptop for both production & admin

dinojag · Post by **dinojag** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 1:39 pm

Greetings All!

A Live newbie & already extremely hooked!

Because of travel commitments I need to start using a laptop for both music production work & admin/internet use...

Anyone got any tips or recomendations when using a laptop for both music production & admin? Want to maximise performance & minimise conflicts.

I've just scored myself a Tosiba P20 3.4GHz... just taking it out of the box now... hmmm the smell of a new toy!

Appreciate your input.

With Thanks
Dino

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 8:01 pm

Hello, I did it like this:
Make 2 partitions of a size that fits your needs, for me 24GB for internet use and 14gb for my music apps.
On the internet system make all the security updates and the on the music system install only the drivers and apps you need for music, shut down all the services you don´t need in gpedit.msc and no internet connection!

One time the 2 systems properly installed make 2 compressed .rar files of both WINDOWS folders and burn them on 2 separate cd´s for backup!
Now when starting your toshiba after the startup toshiba screen you can select 2 separate windows and if one time something goes wrong with one of them, just start the other windows and unrar the needed WINDOWS to your other partition and replace the broken WINDOWS folder, everything is restored to the day you made your backup!

Greetings

Steve

dinojag · Post by **dinojag** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 1:35 am

Thanks for the info Steve. That sounds like good advice. Haven't had the need to partition with my desktop set up but with the lap top sounds like it could be a good way to go. I'll be using an external firewire/usb combo drive (just looking currently looking at the options - suggetions welcome!). I was surprised to find that Toshiba P20's internal drive speed is running at 4200rpm.

Cheers
Dino

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 10:17 am

Yes, mine too is a 4200!
But I think to replace mine by by a 60GB 7200rpm and use the 4200 to put in the style bay adaptor, don´t know if your P20 has such an option, so I could install my 2 systems on 2 different HD´s and still can boot them from startup and!
If you want to connect via fw or usb2 you will not be able to boot from startup your external system, think on this!
And like the fw port is 4 pin only (means no bus power over fw), you will always need to connect the AC/DC adaptor for your HD, don´t know how it is with usb2!
Believe me , install 2 different and optimized systems if you don´t want to install everyting more than one time!

Greetings

Steve

drush · Post by **drush** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 6:50 pm

use a mac

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 7:50 pm

drush wrote:use a mac

I do I do but I kinda dont think that is gonna help someone with a new Toshiba as much as I agree. I myself just switched from an older Toshiba and winxp to OSX

pax · Post by **pax** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 7:19 pm

Also, just think about everything you put on it...

Even something as harmless as Real Player can end up causing glitches while you are playing.

Learn how to use Run->msconfig
check out all the programs you are running. then go to a place like:
http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/brows ... 00&end=225

and make sure that each of those programs in your startup are absolutely necessary to your computer's performance. I have found with most PCs, striaght out of the box you can streamline them allot.

The cleaner you keep these files the cleaner your computer will run.

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:37 pm

I've done the partioning thing and it works great with my 60gb 4200rpm. After shutting down all the services i dont use with the music partition (even the DHCP and DNS client and all networking stuff), I now use about 60mb RAM for XP pro. Usually it uses about 140 or so with all the stuff enabled.

As for raring up the folders, another option which I've done is to use good ol Norton Ghost to make an image of the drive. It has much better compression than rar, and is a loooot faster too.

I had 9gb of all my software and vst's, ghosted the partition and it fit nicely on one DVD-R. Now if something fks up I can just plop in the DVD and restore the partition instantly!

my 3c

Tim