PC Laptop computer question?
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- KVRian
- 1161 posts since 22 Feb, 2004 from Seattle, WA
Well, if you're gonna get a Dell you may as well go ahead and buy two. It'll fall apart...
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- KVRian
- 667 posts since 4 Jun, 2002
Well I'm definitely no dell cheerleader but I use the desktops at work and a lot of my co-workers have dell laptops for work as well (commercial software dev lab) and I haven't seen anything better or worse than most other major brands.... if there's a similar spec'ed 2ghz centrino "fully loaded" machine out there at vaugely the same pricepoint I'd love to hear about it. And I really mean that, not just being a wise-guy.
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- KVRer
- 7 posts since 29 Mar, 2005 from Lowell, Ma. United States
Take a look at TigerDirect.com You can call a let the sales rep know what your looking for. They might have the best prices aswell. Remember that a Laptop has a smaller mother board with a stripped down version of what ever processor. Go with pentium 4 2.8 ghz or higher. Get at least 1 gig of ram make sure it has usb 2.0 possibly firewire to. That way external hard drives will run faster when needed. At tiger you can probably tell them to ship it with no opp. or programs wich will bring down the price. There are plenty of xp pro opps around. Good Luck
Electric funk with a new sound coming from the political graph...
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- KVRer
- 20 posts since 24 Oct, 2003
Hi chrisby
Just got a Dell 600m 1.8ghz
1 gb ram
It's great. The ASIO4All drivers are pretty solid with the stock audio card so that's a big plus. The performance is impressive, even with Live 4.1.1 and Reason 3.
If you can get a good price on this model, I recommend it. pm me if you have any questions
Just got a Dell 600m 1.8ghz
1 gb ram
It's great. The ASIO4All drivers are pretty solid with the stock audio card so that's a big plus. The performance is impressive, even with Live 4.1.1 and Reason 3.
If you can get a good price on this model, I recommend it. pm me if you have any questions
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- KVRAF
- 2495 posts since 18 May, 2004 from ATL-USA
Ahhh...Dell....
f**kers took my money, and my brother's money, and left us with noting but a shell.
My motherboard, let me repeat, motherboard, went bad exactly three days past the 1-year manf. warranty. I called Dell and explained my problem (let it be known that I am pretty computer savvy and knew the problem from the get-go). I had to jump through the hoops with (India) tech support for an hour before I finally reached the senior technical dude. He said "your motherboard is bad". I said, "So why did the motherboard go bad?". He said, "Defective motherboards usually go bad over a period of time". That made sense to me because I'd had performance problems about 7 months after recieving the computer. I said, "Well, surely since this is a recognized problem, I can get a new motherboard, free of charge". "I'm sorry sir, your warranty has expired, but we will be happy to ship you a new motherboard for $250"!!!!!?
My brother called me two weeks later saying that his keyboard on his dell laptop went dead. A customer came into work that same day and said their Dell had died after just a year. That was a sign for me. I rebuilt the computer with an Asus board and couldn't be happier. Asus gives a three year warranty
.
But anyways, laptops....
I'm typing on my new sony vaio. I love it!
It's a P4 3.2, 1GB RAM, 60GB HD, 802.11G, DVD+/-RW
Please don't buy an HP laptop with the specs you listed for $800. There are much better deals to be had. A Centrino or AMD64 is not going to happen in that range, but you CAN get a good music laptop in that pricerange. Mainly look for a high RAM machine (at least 512MB). Next, make sure the FSB is at least 400MhZ. THEN, look at processor type/speed.
And lastly, you should be patient and keep your eyes open. Deals come and go, you want to make sure that you are sychronized with the right deal. Don't settle for less (you can't go wrong with Toshiba or Sony, imo).
f**kers took my money, and my brother's money, and left us with noting but a shell.
My motherboard, let me repeat, motherboard, went bad exactly three days past the 1-year manf. warranty. I called Dell and explained my problem (let it be known that I am pretty computer savvy and knew the problem from the get-go). I had to jump through the hoops with (India) tech support for an hour before I finally reached the senior technical dude. He said "your motherboard is bad". I said, "So why did the motherboard go bad?". He said, "Defective motherboards usually go bad over a period of time". That made sense to me because I'd had performance problems about 7 months after recieving the computer. I said, "Well, surely since this is a recognized problem, I can get a new motherboard, free of charge". "I'm sorry sir, your warranty has expired, but we will be happy to ship you a new motherboard for $250"!!!!!?
My brother called me two weeks later saying that his keyboard on his dell laptop went dead. A customer came into work that same day and said their Dell had died after just a year. That was a sign for me. I rebuilt the computer with an Asus board and couldn't be happier. Asus gives a three year warranty
.But anyways, laptops....
I'm typing on my new sony vaio. I love it!
It's a P4 3.2, 1GB RAM, 60GB HD, 802.11G, DVD+/-RW
Please don't buy an HP laptop with the specs you listed for $800. There are much better deals to be had. A Centrino or AMD64 is not going to happen in that range, but you CAN get a good music laptop in that pricerange. Mainly look for a high RAM machine (at least 512MB). Next, make sure the FSB is at least 400MhZ. THEN, look at processor type/speed.
And lastly, you should be patient and keep your eyes open. Deals come and go, you want to make sure that you are sychronized with the right deal. Don't settle for less (you can't go wrong with Toshiba or Sony, imo).
Anti-aliasing is for "synthmonk%ys".
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- KVRian
- 1161 posts since 22 Feb, 2004 from Seattle, WA
That sounds like a typiacl Dell story. You won't believe the horror stories I've heard from my customers that have made the mistake of going Dell.
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- KVRAF
- 4822 posts since 14 Mar, 2002 from Somewhere else, on principle
The only major downside I've heard about Sony is that they are very bad about providing access to legacy drivers for their computers.freeztar wrote:But anyways, laptops....
I'm typing on my new sony vaio. I love it!
It's a P4 3.2, 1GB RAM, 60GB HD, 802.11G, DVD+/-RW
I'm on my 3rd Toshiba, just got an M35 1.7GH Centrino, and have been very pleased with all of them.
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- KVRAF
- 8082 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
Compaq Athlon XP-M 2500+ with 512MB RAM here. $900US two years ago, still going strong. DVD burner never did burn, but I just VNC to my desktop machine for that anyway.
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- KVRian
- 1184 posts since 27 Apr, 2004 from Houston, Texas
butter wrote:You should go ahead and buy two of those because Dell's build quality is poor at best in my opinion. Also, don't get a Celeron. They suck for music.
false
I have a dell inspiron 9200 with a pentium centrino 2.0 1 gig of ram and 7200 hd
thing is built like a rock (mac?).
dell is okay but you have to go for their top-of-the-line stuff.
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- KVRAF
- 2217 posts since 15 Jul, 2003
i've heard horror stories about almost all laptops
(Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Dell and Fujitsu)
a great deal depends on how they get used. if they're used as mobile devices they all tend to eventually have problems. If they're used as desktop replacements they can easily last till they're obsolete.
it would be difficult to make generalizations, as I'm sure everybody has seens a differnt set of failures. Our company gave up on Toshiba notebooks cause they didn't hold up to travel very well. Now we use Dells (8600's) and there have been very few problems. But tech support hrough India has become a nightmare with Dell. When I was having SP2 install problems on my Dell 5100 to turn it off for a day or two and try it then. I don't get spittin' mad very often, but that remark sent me through the roof.
A few people at work have Sony's and I haven't heard any body who has had problems with them. HP's some connectors have cracked. Compaq's overheat like crazy.
I would suggest for a portable solution a Shuttle Box. If I was to do this over again, I'd go with a Shuttle. They are rock solid, very high-performance machines. Quite a few places are selling them online. You'll need a monitor and keyboard and mouse, but for about $1300 usd altogether you can walk away with a very stable screamer of a box.
http://sys.us.shuttle.com/
http://sys.us.shuttle.com/promotionInfo.aspx
[edit] based on some online prices I needed to revise my estimate downward -- basically less than equivalent high-end notebooks
(Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Dell and Fujitsu)
a great deal depends on how they get used. if they're used as mobile devices they all tend to eventually have problems. If they're used as desktop replacements they can easily last till they're obsolete.
it would be difficult to make generalizations, as I'm sure everybody has seens a differnt set of failures. Our company gave up on Toshiba notebooks cause they didn't hold up to travel very well. Now we use Dells (8600's) and there have been very few problems. But tech support hrough India has become a nightmare with Dell. When I was having SP2 install problems on my Dell 5100 to turn it off for a day or two and try it then. I don't get spittin' mad very often, but that remark sent me through the roof.
A few people at work have Sony's and I haven't heard any body who has had problems with them. HP's some connectors have cracked. Compaq's overheat like crazy.
I would suggest for a portable solution a Shuttle Box. If I was to do this over again, I'd go with a Shuttle. They are rock solid, very high-performance machines. Quite a few places are selling them online. You'll need a monitor and keyboard and mouse, but for about $1300 usd altogether you can walk away with a very stable screamer of a box.
http://sys.us.shuttle.com/
http://sys.us.shuttle.com/promotionInfo.aspx
[edit] based on some online prices I needed to revise my estimate downward -- basically less than equivalent high-end notebooks
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- KVRian
- 755 posts since 12 Mar, 2004
Go get a Centrino at least at 1.6 GHz!
You will be
and 
and 
with many plugins 
1GB RAM if you can afford but no way less than 512MB.
Depending of your arrangements you can work with its internal HDD (even if it has 4200RPM but with 8MB cache) with no problems with 32 stereo tracks at 24bits/44,1kHz or more with a 5400RPM model (if you're lucky the laptop can already have one of these) or, if you use samplers a lot and need to do much disk streaming, you'll definately need a 7200RPM model (and at least 1GBRAM for this too).
And you will run sooo many MiniMoogs and be sooooo happy
I know, I am
But don't ever go for Celeron for audio and for P4, not even for P4Mobile wich is kind of outdated compared to the new and powerfull Centrino.
If you really want AMD (though I don't like them) wait for the new Turion64 wich will come very soon, it's their mobile solution (they have to re-enter in the mobile scene after the Centrino explosion).
Good luck!
You will be
and and with many plugins 1GB RAM if you can afford but no way less than 512MB.
Depending of your arrangements you can work with its internal HDD (even if it has 4200RPM but with 8MB cache) with no problems with 32 stereo tracks at 24bits/44,1kHz or more with a 5400RPM model (if you're lucky the laptop can already have one of these) or, if you use samplers a lot and need to do much disk streaming, you'll definately need a 7200RPM model (and at least 1GBRAM for this too).
And you will run sooo many MiniMoogs and be sooooo happy
I know, I am
But don't ever go for Celeron for audio and for P4, not even for P4Mobile wich is kind of outdated compared to the new and powerfull Centrino.
If you really want AMD (though I don't like them) wait for the new Turion64 wich will come very soon, it's their mobile solution (they have to re-enter in the mobile scene after the Centrino explosion).
Good luck!
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- KVRist
- 145 posts since 24 Feb, 2004 from Wagga, NSW, Australia
I have a question for the laptop musos...
Most laptops seem to come from the factory with the HD partitioned into two halves. I guess this is so you don't lose everything in a crash.
For a DAW, is it better to split the disk into 2 (or more) partitions or just keep it all in one? Is there any special way the disk should be formatted (inodes etc) to give best performance for music?
Philip
Most laptops seem to come from the factory with the HD partitioned into two halves. I guess this is so you don't lose everything in a crash.
For a DAW, is it better to split the disk into 2 (or more) partitions or just keep it all in one? Is there any special way the disk should be formatted (inodes etc) to give best performance for music?
Philip