Topic: Laptop / VX Pocket V2 questions

[OFOTD]

Just bought a VX Pocket V2 and a new laptop.  Laptop is a Dell 700m (2ghz, 1GB ram, 60gb HD) 

Years ago there was a steadfast rule that you had to dual boot and run one OS with damn near everything turned off.  I think that this was mostly due to the speed and processing capibilites of older laptops.   Is dual boot stilll the way to go?   XP or 2000 (ugh!)  I have searched through the archives but all the info seemed to be years old and not a true field worthy comments with newer more powerful laptops.   

I will only be recording via the SPDIF in @ 24bit BTW.

Any and all help/suggestions are very much appreciated.

[grider]

I'll be watching this thread closely, as I am right now in the process of moving to computer based recording and tranferring my dats to other formats, via laptop and VX Pocket V2, some confusing shit to say the least, but I must say taping directly onto laptop seems way easier than just about anything else, no dats, no dumping into hard drive, so simple at least in theory

[rustoleum]

I'm still running a Vaio C1VN so take this worth a grain of salt, but I'd still run dual-boot... my main reason would be that one OS will presumably be connected to the web for surfing, downloading, etc and you'll definately want some sort of virus scan software to protect you from all the chaos out in the web... those virus scan proggies can be resource hogs if you have them active for every drive read/file write, etc and would therefore chew up CPU and memory that could otherwise be dedicated to making a decent recording.

[hzgone]

i would say if you are using this laptop for anything else work etc.  make it dual boot.  No need to have all that a/v stuff running while you are trying to record

[TNJazz]

Dual boot is not really necessary anymore, IMO (but not a bad idea if you're worried about it at all).  I had a JVC Interlink 7310 that was my 2/4 track recording machine and I didn't do anything special with it.  It was also my "surf the web on the couch or in the club" machine and no issues with recording to it at all (with my VX Pocket at least).

It's been replaced with something a little bigger (Fujitsu T70G) but there won't be anything different I do to it.  All I do is disable the WiFi when I get ready to record.  I don't even disable the AV.  Knock on wood, I've never had an issue of any kind.

Dirk

[Spinman]

Like Dirk, I don't use a dual boot option, and have had no problems recording with my laptop.  I've used it for 2.5 years w/o any issues.
I have a Sony Picturebook C1MZX, win xp home, and 386 megz of RAM.  933 Mhz Crusoe processor.  I do disable Norton Antivirus and Internet Security.  I also make sure to have Bluetooth turned off.   The few times I forgot to disable the antivirus/firewall, I still didn't have any problems.  I record at 24/48 via either Spidif or XLR Input. 
So far, it's been rock solid.  Just keep an eye on the dongle.  It's a terrible design; especially for field use.
Dave

[OFOTD]

Thanks for all the advice.  +T's all around.  So I have been screwing around this week with the card.   Had a few initial bumps but have gotten them worked out hopefully.  Only using the digi-in so far though.  I have decided to try is without dual boot.  For AV i'm run NOD32 so its easy on system resources and I try and keep the bluetooth off for the most part. 

My one complaint is the HUGE dongle.  Anyone have one of the modified ones they want to get rid of or know someone who will mekae me one? 


Thanks guys for the input it is really appreciated!  I'll try and report back after a little more use!

[Spinman]

ianstone is the one you probably want to talk with regarding a custom dongle.
He had a friend that was making them.  I don't know if they're still making them or not.  They were around $45 dollars and everyone seemed to really like them.  I believe it took awhile to get them, as they're custom made, but everyone was happy when the received them.

Here's a thread about them. 

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=13167.0