Ableton Forum

Whats the best laptop at the moment - price can be around 1500 pounds sterling

Come on boys - lush me up!!

Ben

G4 powerbook

HAR HAR HAR.

Athlon 64 4000
$1200 over at hpshopping.com

price after rebates includes:
512MB
60GB 5400RPM
dvd burner
15.4" widescreen brightview

I just got this baby this evening and fired up the live 4 demo to do a perf test - i was running at 17%.

wait until i up the RAM up to 1GB!!!

email me if you need more info

Cache

I build my own system and pack it in two bags when going for gigs. It's a small flatscreen display and a custom built Shuttle pc. It's really portable and doesn't overheat - and has more power than you can stuff in any laptop. The harddiscs are in raid so I'll never loose any data (... well my apartment might burn down of course)...

that's my 2 cents

hold on to your cash till 20 september and get a g5 minimac :p

There was just a laptop shootout in one of the trade mags both Pbook and PC - Dell Inspiron was the winner.

Uh huh, It was Future Music this month. Also has a DVD with Christian Kleine using Ableton with it. The Dell Inspiron 6000, it was. Though it is 900 pounds, so you could be talking a totally different market when you get up to 1500. The integrated Azalia Audio chip does look useful, but less so if you plan on using an external sound card anyway.

Check out the Live 5 Performance test results.

I just bouht a Sony Vaio B3XP and upped the RAM to 1Gb. It's pretty hot on the L5 test at 27%, about =3rd fastest.

ms

i use a Averatec Athlon 2.8 GHz with 256ram and I have yet to have a problem running Live 5.

I have yet to play live though. works great in the studio or on the go.

check out www.rainrecording.com their systems are made for music systems. It's going to be my next system for sure.

That Rain laptop is awfully expensive for no reason that I can see. It's just a Clevo case, but marked up outrageously. I can't see anything they have done to make it a "music laptop". I don't think it justifies the price hike.


Check this out. Same specs. Same case. Different brand. A lot less $$.

http://www.discountpcsales.com/cgi-bin/ ... MTECHM400A

This along with a write up in a few music mags let me on to it.

http://www.rainrecording.com/press/article?id=19

The claim to have it optomized for music use as opposed to normal laptops.

Just my 2 cents though.

So I went and checked out the Rain site. They claim that having a large (8MB) buffer in the hardrive is more important than spindle speed. Any thoughts on that? Anyone know any pointer to relevant test results?

I read the article.... and again... I repeat that I see nothing that they have actually done to make this laptop any different than others.

Just a little info I learned when researching laptops:


Laptops are different than desktop computers in that there are very few manufacturers who make the cases. With a desktop computer, there's so many different case makers, with a million choices for mobos, components, etc...

Laptops are all basically made by a few companies in Taiwan. There's maybe 4 large companies making laptop cases. Clevo is among the larger ones.

Companies like Alienware, VooDoo, Widow PC, Sager, etc.... they all use Clevo cases. Even name brand companies like HP/Compaq, Dell, and others have their cases built for them. There's only a few name brands who actually make their own cases. IBM & Sony are two.

Let's take Alienware as an example. They make high-end laptops for gaming. They have two designs. The Area 51m, and the Sentia.

Here is a picture of the Alienware Area 51m:




Now here is a picture of the Sager NP 9880:




Look the same, right? That's because they use the IDENTICAL case made by Clevo.


Here is the Clevo D900T laptop case:

http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/D900T.asp



They're all the same.


Now check out M-Tech D900T.



Look familiar?




Now comes the interesting part. Alienware, Sager & M-Tech... they all use the same case. And they all have the same options available.... because the case dictates the components which can be used. But... Sager & Alienware charge more than M-Tech. A lot more.


Why do they do this? It's for differentiation. Alienware, for example... they take the Clevo case, disassemble it and paint it. Then they put a Alien head with glowing eyes on the back of the screen.... slap the box back together and install the hard drive, ram, cpu, etc... Then they charge the customer extra for their cosmetic treatment. None of it makes the computer any better than it was before. But the case looks cooler, so it gives the impression of being unique.



Now... Back to Rain. Let's start by taking a close look at the laptop case for the Rain laptop. Here it is:



The Rain laptop is not the same model as those other laptops. But look at the touchpad. It looks pretty similar to the pictures of other laptops above... particularly the scroll pad to the right.

I am willing to bet that the Rain laptop is using a Clevo M38AW case.

Here is the M-tech version using that case:

http://www.m-techlaptops.com/specificat ... chm38a.htm


Here is the Clevo case: http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/M38AW.asp


Ignore the colors, because any laptop can be painted. (That's what Alienware does)



I think they're all the same case. They all offer the same options, (with some very minor differences). But look at the M-Tech prices. A lot less, for the same specs.

The basic Rain laptop specs are as follows:

Pentium M 730J 1.6GHz
512 RAM
60 GB 5400 rpm drive
15.4" screen (WXGA) (no option for upgrade)
Optical Drive 24X10X8X +24X Combo CD-RW+DVD

Price = $2,295.95


M-Tech M38A with similar specs:

Pentium M 740 1.73GHz (M-Tech doesn't offer the 730J CPU)
512 RAM
60 GB 5400 rpm drive
15.4" screen (WXGA) (upgradable to WSXGA+ or WUXGA)
CDR/RW + DVD combo drive (upgradable to DVD-R/RW with LightScribe)

Price: $1,400.00


But... wait a second. This isn't a fair comparison yet, because they don't have the same CPU. So, let's add the Intel 740 processor to the Rain laptop:

Pentium M 740 1.7GHz
512 RAM
60 GB 5400 rpm drive
15.4" screen (WXGA) (no option for upgrade)
Optical Drive 24X10X8X +24X Combo CD-RW+DVD

Price = $2,355.90


So.... they're basically the same laptop. But the Rain is $955.90 more.


The point I'm trying to make is... computers are commodities. Companies try to use their branding to differentiate their products from the competition, but when it comes down to it... they're just trying to increase profit margins on items that are only marginally different at best.

By all means, get any laptop you want. I'm certain it will work great. But I just don't believe that these Rain people did anything special to their laptop to warrant an additional $1000. They say their case has extra venting... ok... but I don't think they manufactured the case, so how did they accomplish this? Did they just cut some extra holes? Maybe they did. Is that worth $1000? That would have to be one fancy case to be worth another $1000.

asus laptops rule.