Ableton Forum

Hi Matt,

I'm on a rebranded (millennium music) Clevo m57u. It's running winXP home, 2.3 ghz cpu, and currently 2 gigs ram (soon to be 4gigs(3 usable).

What I like about the laptop: fast, powerful, huge screen, 4 usb, firewire etc etc. Basically a gaming laptop.

What I DONT like about it: Jet Engine Fans, f'ing loud and embarrassing at quiet gigs. Millennium Music REALLY should have mentioned this. Plus it had a ground loop problem from hell that required me finally going with a non-grounded psu. Again MM dropped the ball on that. And the casing feels really plasticy.

Otherwise, even though it's 3 years old, it's still a powerhouse of a laptop and I'm unsure what I'd go with next..maybe an HP Elite or Lenovo (though I've read these are slipping). I've considered a Rain Recording computer as they say their quiet but everyone says they're over priced and after being taken by MM, I'm not sure how much more I got for my money-I mean, I know how to tweak XP for audio, so feel a bit let down.

As for running ableton, I've been having off and on hiccup problems since getting version 8. I've just switched to avasti instead of avg and it seems to be loading lots LESS stuff in the background and I think is making a difference. I'm a bit frustrated because I'm unsure if it's Abe or the Clevo. I suspect the former as 7 didn't give me these issues, but who knows. I do know I have some high profile gigs coming up that I can't afford to have train wrecks on, so anticipating actually going back to sd-dj and cd-dj set ups to make sure there's no hiccups. Sucks because I love Ableton.

Best of luck,

Bill

Ah ok, I've been reading a bit about MM, seem quite good. The problem is is that unfortunately, when looking for laptops (unless you scour every forum on the net SOS, Ableton, Asus...) they never say things like you have such as any ground loop issues or popping. Obviously because they're trying to sell you their product!

Just makes it so much harder to buy with confidence!
Cos i'm now still thinking of buying the Asus N61JV but in complete blind faith that when I try to run Ableton there won't be any soundcard or driver issues that prevent it from working. I'm guessing "the main reason i bought this was for a program that having installed on your laptop doesn't work" isn't a valid returns claim under warranty...

EDIT: Having said that, is it a valid reason to return it!? As in, am I allowed to? (Guessing not as I've installed something on it..)

Well, Rain Recording, and possibly MM, and many of the other boutique computer companies selling 'audio' laptops often will install these products (if you own them) for you. MM, Rain, ADK etc are selling laptops that are supposed to run these programs, so you could/should expect these machines to be able to handle Ableton with little or no issues, that is, if Ableton itself isn't having issues-which at this point is a bit of a difficult thing to pin down as people on every type of machine seem to be running into some issues (and many aren't...slippery stuff).

The things I learned from my own experience with MM was to make sure that:

A: how loud are the fans?
B: does it have a ground loop issue
C: does it have firewire and if not, can it take a card adaptor

To me, the above are things that should just be sorted out as an audio machine. The new laptops are much more powerful though and thus, need more fans etc. Also, the Clevos and I'm thinking also the Asus are often sold as gaming machines-lots of horsepower and powerful graphics card, but then again, fan noise not the biggest issue for these machines...so beware.

Also, make sure that you have all the other bases covered...7200rpm harddrive, at least 2 gigs ram, 4 gigs is best so you can use at least the 3 gigs for Ableton, the right chipset for Firewire (TI something or other, google this), and enough usb ports, firewire or adaptor capable, and a decent CPU of course, at least dual core, but most of them are these days that are worth anything.

So yes, lots to think about and I understand having to scour the net...eventually you just have to go with something...Like I said, if/when I get my next machine, I'm thinking Lenovo or HP Elite...Rain uses Lenovo's but I'm unsure exactly what they do to them to make them Rain Computers. I would hope it was more than simply optimising XP!

Best of luck,

Bill