Topic: Need some advice on a laptop

[mde420]

I've made up my mind, and I'm going for a laptop.  If I have to wait to get the mics, then so be it.  Okay, basically I need a pentium II processor or higher.  Expandable PCI slots for the sound card.  LOTS of RAM, and a nice size hard drive.  A CDRW drive as well.  What about an OS?  My understanding is XP is kind of shakey, along with 98 and millenium.  Is Windows 2000 the way to go?  I don't plan on playing DVD's, maybe surf the web, but I would go some sort of ethernet card for broadband.  Just want to record/burn music.  Probally looking at an external drive, like zip or something along the lines of that to store files.  I'd like to go with an Apple, but since Steve Jobs has been back, their high prices are back.  All opionions welcome.  Thanks

[jpschust]

I personally am a fan of my Vaio Picturebook.  I run win2k.  Some things to think about-- what pre are you gonna put in front of it?  MME?  Then you dont need to worry about converting the signal...

[d swing]

I've had a pixbook c1vn for about a year now and love it.  Granted, I had mine customized by Dan Heend.  Overall, you're on the right track.  Go for 256 or more RAM, at least 20 gigs and 400+MHz processor.  I run win2k as well.

One other thing, I recommend multiple partitions.  I have three, one for my recording OS, one for a standard win2k installation, and anohter (the biggest by far) for audio.  

I would say the only downside is that it is very shaky with usb audio.  I know that people have had problems using a sound devices USBpre but YMMV...hope this helped!

-D

[mde420]

Does Dan still build laptops?  If so, how can I get ahold of him?  I wouldn't be using USB, I would be using a soundcard with digi coax/spdif i/o.  It appears that Firewire is getting closer and closer to transmitting audio, which is so much better that USB.  What OS are you running for the recording drive?

mike

[mde420]

One more thing, what about software for recording?

[d swing]

Absolutely!  Here's the link to his site:  http://www.daarwin24.com/  He answers all emails sent to any of the addresses there.  

As far as software I'm a big fan of Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 2.0 and 3.0.  It lets you get around the 2 gig windows file size limit by using a .w64 format.  You can then chop the music up in soundforge and have regular .wav files.  I'll also give wavelab 4.0 a nod, great dithering (uses an apogee algorithm) but it's useless if you're not doing hi res stuff.  

-D

P.S.  If you end up contacting dan, tell him derek swingley sent you, I think he'd get a kick out of that.