Ableton Forum

Here's what I got for $850
Lenovo ThinkPad T410
i5 2.67 ghz
2 gigs ram


I was really not expecting that much out of this computer and got it mainly to use on stage with just a few tracks. I got this particular one because it has firewire, and my interface is a MOTU 8pre.
I was expecting it to take a few days at least to sort out the drivers, having heard horror stories and people who say if you don't have a Texas Instruments firewire chipset, you can't make beats on your computer, etc.
All I had to do was revert the 1394 driver to legacy. Everything else has been perfect.
I ran DPC Latency check and got ZERO spikes.

I've been running Ableton with my 8pre, APC 40, a midi keyboard, Two external synths both coming in stereo, two microphones(6 tracks active on the 8pre), 30+ tracks total and probably 15 effects in the mix, on 128 samples latency, and the cpu never goes above 15% mostly hovers around 9-11%
I should mention this is with wifi disabled etc...

another nice thing, maybe this is just windows 7, but on my xp computer the apc40 and other midi devices just show up as "usb device 1, usb device 2..." but on the new one it recognizes each device, even my ancient e-mu midi keyboard, which ableton has never recognized. when you are using 3 usb devices it is a very nice thing.

Thinkpads are better then Macbook Pros, in my opinion. Used both a lot over the years. Only the test of time proves. They are the only ones who beats MBPros on the consumer marked.

Nice to here about Win7. Looking forward to upgrade from XP!

Yep, that USB Audio device thang is an XP thang.

ze2be wrote:Thinkpads are better then Macbook Pros, in my opinion. Used both a lot over the years. Only the test of time proves. They are the only ones who beats MBPros on the consumer marked.

Nice to here about Win7. Looking forward to upgrade from XP!

I had lenovo laptops before and wh?le I th?nk they are about the best ?n the PC world, I st?ll *much* prefer my macbook pro as a comb?ned IT work and pro aud?o product?on and performance laptop. T61P that I had st?ll rema?ns the best PC laptop I have ever had (hot swapable DVD/HD, 1920x1200 d?splay ?n a 15" format laptop, and cards slots etc made for a very good sem?-workstat?on l?ke laptop ?n ?ts day).

On my new MBP 17 I l?ke that I can have a very clean W?ndows 7/64 ?nstall for IT work, v?rtual mach?nes, VS2010 etc as well as OSX for med?a product?on. OSX seems to g?ve better aud?o performance and rel?ab?l?ty for runn?ng ableton L?ve+M4L, Traktor 2, Log?c, Cubase, though I f?nd UI respons?vness of w?ndows better then ?s typ?cal on the above apps under OSX (?gnor?ng log?c as that ?s OSX only).

Even as a pure W?ndows laptop I l?ke the MBP - perhpas about the clean W?ndows lapop ?nstall I have come across, and even though the MBP17 expans?on opt?ons are somewhat l?m?ted compared to a typ?cal PC laptop and thunderbolt dev?ces are st?ll some way off.

Where an MBP fa?ls most for bus?ness/corporate use ?s the current rel?ance upon smart cards for phsy?cal bu?ld?ng access and network log?n etc ?n many compan?es - there ?s no full s?ze card slot on any MBP that can aqccomodate smart cards - even the 17 and I hate be?ng forced to have some USB card reader dev?ce plugged ?n all the t?me.

For general use, I st?ll th?nk W?ndows 7 ?s a better developed and much r?cher OS, w?th far better development ev?ronment and opt?ons etc (sure, XCode 4 etc ?s gett?ng alot better, but st?ll seems very pr?m?t?ve and I dont really l?ke object?ve C much compared to C#), but for anyth?ng med?a related I have to say I s?mply prefer that the core OS med?a stream?ng technology are good enough for profess?onal med?a work wheras on w?ndows we have to rely on unsupported 3rd party technolog?es (ASIO, VST etc) as the core stuff just ?snt developed for much use beyond gam?ng and watch?ng TV etc.

Th?s ?s not say?ng that I th?nk Core Aud?o/MIDI/Image/V?deo etc are perfect - far from ?t, but at least the needs of med?a producers are a core part of the platform, so ?f I want to do someth?ng stup?d l?ke us?ng an Apple TV as a w?reless aud?o ?nterface for Traktor, then one way or another - I can do ?t (though I w?s apple would make the a?rtunes stuff core aud?o based ?nstead). On w?ndows you usually come to a dead end because consumer stuff l?ke that s?ts on MS aud?o tech, whereas the sofware you use rel?es upon 3rd party ASIO aud?o tech and opt?ons for decent br?dg?ng are near non-ex?stant. MS never seems to rema?n cons?tent w?th ther med?a plug?n technolog?es so ?ts hard to develop med?a software that can leverage a bunch of ex?st?ng plug?ns for ?mage, v?deo 3d man?pulat?on etc.

Nice post!

However, I still (marginaly) prefer my 12", 3 year old ThinkPad X61 to a similar speced MBP.
Only talking about the hardware ofcource. It feels even more solid. Spill proof keyboard also. 3.usb ports, ++

ze2be wrote:Thinkpads are better then Macbook Pros, in my opinion. Used both a lot over the years. Only the test of time proves. They are the only ones who beats MBPros on the consumer marked.

Nice to here about Win7. Looking forward to upgrade from XP!

the thinkpads are defently no crap laptop.. but how much have you payed for this machine?

i just wonder because people allways tell that windows machines are so much cheaper.. and i really cant belive that. At least the ibm laptops was once around the most expensiv you can get..has this changed so much?

3phase wrote:

ze2be wrote:Thinkpads are better then Macbook Pros, in my opinion. Used both a lot over the years. Only the test of time proves. They are the only ones who beats MBPros on the consumer marked.

Nice to here about Win7. Looking forward to upgrade from XP!

the thinkpads are defently no crap laptop.. but how much have you payed for this machine?

i just wonder because people allways tell that windows machines are so much cheaper.. and i really cant belive that. At least the ibm laptops was once around the most expensiv you can get..has this changed so much?

At the time (2008) it was almost 1/2 the price of a similare spec'd MBP.

well this is good to hear..
i just got a thinkpad t410 i7
i thought i was in the clear until i finally started to do some real work..

ableton randomly stops the clock when i'm using my presonus firestudio.
i ordered a fire wire express card with a t.i. chip set..
hopefully that resolves my issue..

but if it doesn't i can look to move over to a motu..
i need to sell my motu pci 424/2408 mkiii from my old desktop set up too

i may just swing back over to the mac side if things don't work out too.
i have a pic up gig in two weeks but i can use my girls mbp or the band leaders mbp for the gig if i need to

i kind of want to keep the thinkpad so i can max the ram and add a 750 MB secondary internal drive..

Didn't Lenovo have been recently bought by a Chinese company?

I don't know how much of a difference it made that I disabled alot of unused services, devices, startup items. I set this is up as an Ableton ONLY computer, so literally, even my internal sound i think is disabled, as well as my webcam, sd controller, wifi, modem, anything that isn't for music production is disabled. So I also don't have any anti-virus installed, and windows update is turned off, so there are minimum background processes.
I don't know if all this stuff actually lets you get lower latentcy without droupouts or not, but thats what I've got going on.

crushtest wrote:I don't know how much of a difference it made that I disabled alot of unused services, devices, startup items. I set this is up as an Ableton ONLY computer, so literally, even my internal sound i think is disabled, as well as my webcam, sd controller, wifi, modem, anything that isn't for music production is disabled. So I also don't have any anti-virus installed, and windows update is turned off, so there are minimum background processes.
I don't know if all this stuff actually lets you get lower latentcy without droupouts or not, but thats what I've got going on.

Same here. Though I use a dual boot system, and have the second for the net etc.

crushtest wrote:I don't know how much of a difference it made that I disabled alot of unused services, devices, startup items. I set this is up as an Ableton ONLY computer, so literally, even my internal sound i think is disabled, as well as my webcam, sd controller, wifi, modem, anything that isn't for music production is disabled. So I also don't have any anti-virus installed, and windows update is turned off, so there are minimum background processes.
I don't know if all this stuff actually lets you get lower latentcy without droupouts or not, but thats what I've got going on.

I'd put Microsoft Security Essentials on there if that were my machine. Minimal resource footprint, non-invasive messaging, can easily be disabled/re-enabled if you want (if you want to be 100% sure you won't get any messages popping up during a gig, etc), simple to maintain, and it's nice to have as a line of defense against any potential nasties you might run into.

I have it running on my Ableton laptop, and it has never given me any problems.

i tweaked it out allot and turned mostly everything off including network and all that.
i spent the 15 hours over the last 24 working on it.
still no luck.. the express card gets here on Saturday, hopefully that does the trick.

in the end i'd really prefer to be able to access my file server and the net..
i suppose a dual boot with linux and win 7 would work out..

the main thing is to see if i can get the firestudio even working
if not find a motu 8 pre to test and go from their.

haha this is why i tell my close friends that don't geek out on computers to get a mac
i don't want to go through all this more than once every 3-5 years.
all that being said, this is my last pc.. i'm sick of the it just works after you trouble shoot it and tweak for a few days.
well i did save like $800 though

crushtest wrote:I don't know how much of a difference it made that I disabled alot of unused services, devices, startup items. I set this is up as an Ableton ONLY computer, so literally, even my internal sound i think is disabled, as well as my webcam, sd controller, wifi, modem, anything that isn't for music production is disabled. So I also don't have any anti-virus installed, and windows update is turned off, so there are minimum background processes.
I don't know if all this stuff actually lets you get lower latentcy without droupouts or not, but thats what I've got going on.

And this is why I quite like OSX on the MBP - I havn't had to disable anything. I even have a 3G internet dongle plugged in and active when working on the move. I can work with my RME UFX in studio at 64 samples latency reliably (but usually run it at 128). Even the NI Audio 2 DJ I take with me when I need something small and minimal I run at 128 samples.

I havnt tried any audio software on the windows 7/64 install on this thing yet, but a quick run at DPC latency checker with everything still enabled and the 3G dongle active was around 120us with a spike every so often - probably the 3G dongle, so I'm guess with windows I might have to fiddle a bit to get it perfect for audio use, but the sense I get of the apple drivers for windows is they seem pretty good - far better than most of the crap that windows OEMs stick on their laptops.

I'm actually still running the original apple factory OSX install - cloned the original 500GB drive onto a 750GB WD scorpio black and setup a bootcamp partition. My experience with windows laptops is that I might have a quick fiddle with the OEM junk to see if any of it can possibly be useful and then reformat and reinstall. And thats just for general office/development use - never mind trying to do anything media related. As you say - for media work, then typically its a hell of a lot of messing about to get best use of the hardware and to get anything like the low latency performance I have on this MBP on OSX. Usually I cant be bothered and make do with 256 samples or more.

With this MBP and OSX then finally I have a laptop that is in every way on par with my clean and tuned high end PC studio workstation - boot it into windows instead and I have the general fast IT work machine that I also need - each to their own, but for me this is the best of both world that I could ask for at this time.

Double post