Help And Advice Required For Laptop Purchasing

[Mouse]

I know nothing about computers. I'm a technophobe. They hate me and I hate them. Why I'm doing a Foundation Degree course in Music Production is still a mystery, even to me. But I need to get a laptop. I've been told to get one with a dual processor thingie and can only afford somewhere between £300 and £400.

And no bloody Macs, for I hate them most of all. Even more so than I hate David Cameron and Simon Cowell. Grrr...

Can anyone help point out a model that might suit me?

[Rick]

Hi Mouse, for that kind of money you should be able to get a Dual Core with 2gb of memory, that in theory is enough to run most music software, only problem is no laptop that i know of has onboard sound with Asio support (this is needed to run softsynths and record audio etc with low latency), you can use something called Asio4all which adds asio support to most onboard soundchips but its a little flakey in my experience.
So you may need to allow some extra funds to get an external audio interface with asio support, which could cost you anything from £80 to many hundreds of pounds depending on the level of kit you want, nice thing is most of them are bundled with cut down versions of the big Daw packages like Cubase etc, so gives you some software to start off with until you find your feet..

Hope this helps a tad..


Rick

[rogerg]

I know nothing about computers.


And no bloody Macs, for I hate them most of all.

hmm.  connection?

 

[Mikey]

Handy hint

Avoid wine, esp. RED

[James_S]

I know nothing about computers.


And no bloody Macs, for I hate them most of all.

hmm.  connection?

 

I thought Macs *were* for people who hated computers?

[Philadelphia]

I know nothing about computers.


And no bloody Macs, for I hate them most of all.

hmm.  connection?

 :P

I thought Macs *were* for people who hated computers? ;)

Macs are for people who never shut up about their computers. (;-)

[tomskerous]

Macs are for people who never shut up about their computers. (;-)

That's because we enjoy using them! :-)

(PCs are cheaper, the Mac still doesn't have a decent bit of project management software and Omnigraffle tries too hard to be beautiful unlike Visio's usefulness, so I'm Windows at work. But at home, for pleasure, it's a Mac-only zone.)

[Steve]

Firstly, why do you need a laptop? Is it essential that you go back and forth from home to Uni/College with your machine? You will probably get more value for money by buying a good desktop PC with the essential Core 2 Duo CPU (Dual core) 2GBs RAM and the biggest hard drive you can afford, the advantages of PC over laptop include generally being able to afford a better spec for your money - you'll see PCs having more RAM and usually more hard disk space than laptops. You don't want anything lower than 2GB Ram, a CPU with a speed of 2ghz and a hard disk drive no smaller than 160GB, especially if you have a large music collection and will be using sample libraries on your course.

Are you aware that you will also probably need some kind of audio interface for your foundation degree?

If you are working purely with MIDI then you will be able to get away with using your laptop's onboard soundcard, however if your course requires you to record AUDIO (live instruments, vocals) etc at home (where the university/college's equipment isn't available) then you will definately need an audio interface. To be honest, as this is a foundation degree, I think it will be unlikely that your workload will be such that you'll have to record audio at home, expect a lot of MIDI based activities.

You will also (ideally) want some speakers for listening (or 'monitoring' as more commonly known) to your recordings, these can sometimes be expensive, check out M-Audio, Edirol and Behringer monitors for value for money, you could also check out some headphones to use instead of more expensive speaker monitors, AKG and Sennheiser are reliable makes, buy the best you can afford.

In terms of laptop, Dell can be very cheap - go to dell.uk, and click on BUSINESS (not home), look at their VOSTRO range of laptops, these are the cheapest as they don't have fancy colours/cases. I myself bought one recently with a very good spec for around £550 - it had some hefty upgrades too which weren't essential. You'll be able to get a double core (Core 2 duo) 2gb RAM and at least a 160gb hard drive for around £400.

I've built 3 home PCs specifically with recording in mind, including the laptop mentioned previously, I got virtually 100% of the information necessary to do this by using the internet, a really good resource is the forum over at overclockers.co.uk, I'm a member there (Andelusion), ask around in the hardware forums and you'll get some replies. Do the research yourself, you will learn on the way, it's important I think to know about your machine when you're doing music production to understand how to maintain it and plan for any future upgrades that may/may not be necessary.

[James_S]

If you are working purely with MIDI then you will be able to get away with using your laptop's onboard soundcard

I agree with everything else you said, however I would disagree with the quote above if you are using soft synths and want to play in real time, as the latency from an onboard soundcard is probably far too high to work effectively.

I think for anything serious music related, you are going to need a decent audio interface anyway and there are plenty of options (again look at m-audio and edirol).

[weezul]

ive had nothing but great experience with ASIO4ALL it infact has acheived lower latencies than my ProFire2626 or Mbox 2 mini ever did, mainly because they are limited to 64 and 128 samples, whereas ASIO i have had down to a shocking 30something samples i think

[rogerg]

I really like my Lexicon Omega
and this is also a pretty neat unit: Tascam FireOne

[Steve]

If you are working purely with MIDI then you will be able to get away with using your laptop's onboard soundcard

I agree with everything else you said, however I would disagree with the quote above if you are using soft synths and want to play in real time, as the latency from an onboard soundcard is probably far too high to work effectively.

I think for anything serious music related, you are going to need a decent audio interface anyway and there are plenty of options (again look at m-audio and edirol).

Using ASIO4ALL should get rid of most if not all noticeable latency, so I've found anyway Using my Dell Vostro's onboard soundcard (no idea what it is) I have no noticeable latency playing back VSTs such as Superior Drummer 2, NI FM8 etc.

[wickedwitch]

mmmm mac... even better... .big mac !   *tummy rumbles*

[RWA]

I really like my Lexicon Omega
and this is also a pretty neat unit: Tascam FireOne

I have a FireOne and it's great.  8-)

For advice on a laptop: make sure it fits on your lap. Some of those laptops are extremely tiny or large and you might have an extremely small or tiny lap. It's vital those two variables are in balance. Well, come to think of it, lap size isn't really a variable is it? But the size of your laptop is. Well, not of one and the same laptop obviously (which would be spectacular!!!) but choosing between different types (which come in different sizes..... well, not always but moslty they do) makes it a variable. Just be aware of that.

My 2 cents.

[Big Black Shed]

Buy the best Mac you can afford. Because they work. A PC comes with an instruction book. A Mac comes with AN instruction: Plug it in. Use it.

And an Edirol FA66 Firewire interface. They sell for about £199. But come bundled with loads of software.

That's my tuppence-worth. And I use both Mac and PC. But I only buy Macs.