Newbie: buyer's help please

[StillWaters]

hello,

i am a newbie in ableton and live.
this is what i want to do with it:

use live live on a laptop as addition to my record based dj sets.


i think about getting live bundled with the m-audio audiophile firewire

now i am looking for a compact laptop which has firewire, enough power
to run live with effects ... and is not going much over 2000 €

which pc-laptop is hot for this job? or a mac?

please help....


thankh you

[StillWaters]

... and is there a major difference between 4pin and 6pin firewire?

which one to get?

i found the thinkpad r50 15", 1,5ghz centrino, 1024kb level 2 and 1024 mb ram (ddr, 333).

[muthafunka]

For a start.... http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7941

[gaspode]

4 pin is unpowered (it won't power devices)... the m-audio audiophile is a 6 pin, but it needs its own power supply (won't accept power from a 6 pin firewire)... I believe. The audiophile comes with both 4pin and 6pin cabling so you'd be all set regardless of which firewire config you purchased.

Since it doesn't sound like you really have any real specific requests on hardware I'd just look at picking up a used laptop... around 1Ghz or so, it should be enough to get you started and cheap enough that if you hate it you wouldn't take such a loss.

[Guest]

thx gaspode...

basically the laptop needs to be tough because in those lil club i use to play records it is hot and wet. means it needs a good cooling too.

it should have enough power to stay up to date for a while and it does not need to have such a huge screen. 15 is max, 14 great...

ah, and i want a 7200rpm internal hd.

maybe one of those 735-755 centrinos...

[Guest]

best would be to configure one myself but since i am here in germany ti seems like nobody else than dell offers me that opportunity.

[gaspode]

Well I'd look into toshiba as well...

if heat is an issue make sure you don't get a desktop processor in your notebook... I'd gravitate towards the centrino (1.5ghz - 2.0ghz) range processor. They are clocked slower, but will perform roughly 400-500 mhz faster if you compare them to their desktop counterparts... so a 1.5ghz centrino would be comperable to a 2.0ghz p4.

the centrino processors have a much larger cache (1mb as opposed to 512k) which helps a lot for audio processing.

From what I have read it looks like Intel may be releasing even more advanced centrino processors that come equipped with a 2mb cache... it may be worth doing a little research into this.

[Guest]

yep, that' the one i was talking about.
the successors starting from 1.7 to 2.0 with 2mb l2 cache.

toshiba....

thx!