Ableton Forum

Hello,

I am going to be moving to laptop but only using each live song for one or two midi tracks (drum programming) at once and about four audio tracks (two synth, guitar ad vox) at once. Is this laptop OK, the only bad thing I can see is shared video memory but I can't find anything with a 14.1 inch widescreen in this price range with dedicated graphics. I am going to be using an UX2 or firebox to track, no more than two tracks recording at once.

DELL 630M

£900 with 3 year warranty

CENTRINO 1.86G
SCREEN 14.1
HD 80 G 72000RPM
1G 533MHZ RAM
INTEL SHARED 128MB GRAPHICS

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ ... l=en&s=dhs

it seems like a perfect machine for my needs but i keep hearing all this shared graphics stuff. anyone using this machine or ismilar or any inputs on alternatives in the price range? i want something compact really

cheers

unless you are going to do 3d gaming and stuff alike, I'd say you're well off with what you've got here. Never mind video RAM shared. Many hits have been done with much, much less CPU power. Good luck!

Looks fine, you should up the RAM to 1 Gb, I run half a gig and can crash Live if I do too much at once (ie reverseing a long sample while playing multiple tracks).

I'm buying this one tonight, it's a different budget but in that range it looks to be a great deal.
HP DV8000T www.hp.com
Operating System Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo processor T2500 (2.0 GHz)
Display 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Widescreen (1680x1050)
Graphics Card 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400
Memory 1.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x512MB)
Hard Drive 160 GB 5400 RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (80 GB x 2)
Primary CD/DVD Drive LightScribe 8x DVD+/-RW&CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer

$1600 incl. shipping plus tax

I've compared it to 15" laptops and nothing comes close in price or features. 2 drives will be great, one for apps, one for samples and I can backup my Live directory on the app drive. Rebuilding the machine would just be an image of the app drive.

Mark Lane wrote:Hello,

I am going to be moving to laptop but only using each live song for one or two midi tracks (drum programming) at once and about four audio tracks (two synth, guitar ad vox) at once. Is this laptop OK, the only bad thing I can see is shared video memory but I can't find anything with a 14.1 inch widescreen in this price range with dedicated graphics. I am going to be using an UX2 or firebox to track, no more than two tracks recording at once.

DELL 630M

£900 with 3 year warranty

CENTRINO 1.86G
SCREEN 14.1
HD 80 G 72000RPM
1G 533MHZ RAM
INTEL SHARED 128MB GRAPHICS

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ ... l=en&s=dhs

it seems like a perfect machine for my needs but i keep hearing all this shared graphics stuff. anyone using this machine or ismilar or any inputs on alternatives in the price range? i want something compact really

cheers

NO, never Intel shared graphic! Nvidia or whatever is OK but those Intels they put in the cheapest model make notebook unusable for music.
Dell is a recycle company, you may be getting outwardly new with recycled parts, built quality is miserable.
If you on budget get Toshiba ( I think they have best deals at the moment) or HP, if you can afford- go for Asus, Sony or Mac.

Thanks for the tips guys. It's certainly a connundrum!!!

I mean I hear that sometimes dedicated graphics of the wrong sort can be even worse than an integrated set. I am hearing complaints about PCI dedicated chips as opposed to AGP.

I have also looked at some lower end laptops put together by specialist laptop music companies like Millenium Music and they have shared Intel graphics. So that indicated to me it wasn't such a bad thing.

I have looked at a lot of HPs and all of them except the really high end models seem to be shared graphics or really bulky. The Toshibas look OK but seem a bit expensive to me.

If anyone can point em at a specific alternative model that would be good.

Deadly that looks like an awesome system for your needs. I just want something compact and semi powerful really.

I was looking at the Inspiron 6000 but it's pretty bulky from what I read, so the 630m seemed perfect. Hmmm.!

I would recommend a Toshiba A100 153 or 169 with a Hitachi 7200rpm drive instead of the 5400rpm original one (1024MbRam - 128Mb Graphics card).
If you buy it from Germany, you get 2 years garantee.
The notebookshop.de people can cusotmize your laptop without voiding the garantee and u can get xp in English for 100 euros off them.

Germany is way cheaper than the UK, believe me.

Plus be careful about the graphics card. Most resellers sell shitty laptops than look great and have nice specs, but forget to mention the graphics card uses only shared memory
Plus they only give you a year guarantee

cheers for the advice but those models seem way out of my price range, even without enhancements the 152 is £1,246.04 !

I am looking sub £1000 really. But thanks for the advice.

I did read in a pro audio magazine laptop review, that the model they were revieiwing was shared graphics but they said it didn't matter so much because the music programs generally have very basic graphics which doesn't put strain on it.

Fair enough

Then have a look at this Centrino laptop:
"Toshiba Satellite M70-186 with Intel Centrino 1.73 GHz (533FSB/1GB)" Fact.-No.: PSM70E-01201DGR
It is the second one listed among the Toshiba M70 series (Bare price is 1139 euros)
Basically, if you spec it up by adding a 3 year guarantee (99 euros) and a 100Gb 7200rpm harddrive (200 euros), it will cost you less than £1000 (1437 euros)
Shared memory too though but much lighter and good components


Dell do so much advertising they can t be the cheapest.
Plus their laptops are so heavy I d prefer to carry my mother around town rather than them

Dell IS cheapest on computer hardware. Bar none. There might be other issues with their computers like build quality (although I've never had trouble with my lappie), but not the price.

And the specs you posted above makes for a very respectable music laptop. It is something like twice as fast as the fastest G4 Apple Powerbook.

Yes and no.
Dell are very clever in the way they present their business model.
If you look at the way they're making business (no middle men to reduce costs for example), it makes sense and you feel they are the best deal around.
But all their massive advertising campaigns aren't for free. They must have the biggest advertising budget of all computer manufacturers (with sony and apple after them maybe).

With Dell, it's all about reductions and savings. They ALWAYS have special offers. How wonderful: Double up your memory for free when most manufacturers offer the same specs, get free peripherals worth €250 (probably €100 from Ebay dealers).

The big advantage with Dell is their automatic 3 year guarantee. That's very clever and gives plenty of confidence to potential buyers in their systems's quality. I also like their accidental guarantee, which is quite cheap.

Thanks for the tips guys will investigate. Also, I know we are debating build quality and suchlike, but my main worry is shared vid memory to be honest.

also saw this HP model for £799 with 2 year guarantee. No shared memory, quite large though and it has a slow hard drive which I assume I could upgrade. what dya think?

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho ... 82603.html

AMD TURION 2GHZ
1GIG 33MHZ RAM
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M IGP graphics
100g 4200rpm hard drive.

seems like a decent deal. it has slower ram than the dell but maybe the dedicated graphics card makes up for it.

I don't know about a 4200rpm drive, that's a critical part of the audio path.

I customised this one with a dual core and faster drive, a dv5000t for $1150 (that's under 1,000 pounds, right?):
Operating System Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo processor T2300 (1.66 GHz)

Display 15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x800)

Graphics Card 128MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400

Memory FREE Upgrade to 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (2x256MB)!!

Hard Drive 60 GB 5400 RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive

Primary CD/DVD Drive DVD+/-RW/R & CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer Support

looks good, yeah was thinking of removing the 4200rpm drive and replacing, how easy are the hard drive upgrades to do on an HP?

I saw a pic of the one I ordered, there's a panel on the bottom towards the front, looks like you just open a door and pop it out.

you can also just select the cheap drive and buy a 5400 or 7200 (for ~$140) when the lappie comes in and use the 4200 drive for backing your stuff up, just throw it in an enclosure (internal drives can be used as externals).

www.pricewatch.com is good for pricing out individual pieces.

The PC is specced for you is also dual core, which Live 6 will be written for, and I've heard that this helps with spreading out the graphics and audio loads even if the app isn't written for dual core.

What's your price point in $? I can spec some PCs out, I just went through this myself.

hi mate, yeah the laptop drive looks like it is easy to pop out, just a door, looked in the manual on the website.

Only shame is that HP UK don't offer individual specs, only standard models, so it looks like a AMD Turion 2ghz for me if i go for that model!