good laptops for Recording??

[gatorjj]

Question for those of you "in the know"....Is an external Firewire drive up to the access / throughput speeds of an internal HD for recording on a laptop? Granted the drive itself would be, I guess my question is more around the firewire interface vs. IDE/SATA or whatever is inside laptops these days.J.J.

[che]

Mazz,We have considered an external HD, but more for backing up and taking the load off the main HD. Well at least that's how we do things now. I do understand your point about them streamlining the software etc.... I guess I should have been a bit more clear. When I mentioned that we have 9 computers....the 7 desktops were built from scratch and only are loaded with what we want on them. So, we do have more knowledge than the average user. Just deciding what's worth it, time and money wise.We like our 1212m so far and we've had it about 2 years. We use the digital outs and ins. Have no complaints.gatorjj: maybe Mazz can speak from experience on the speed of the external HD for recording seeing as we only use it for backup right now. I'd be interested in knowing also. I know we have seen a difference since we switched to SATA from IDE though. Much more stable.

[nickbatzdorf]

I'd still consider a MacBook or MacBook Pro even if you want to run Windows on it. They're hard to beat all around, and they've been proven to work for audio. I have an MBP 2.2GHz Core2 Duo and am very happy with it - powerful, it holds 4GB, and the 15" wide screen is subjectively big enough that I don't feel like it's slowing me down. My previous Mac laptop, which I bought in 2000, is still going strong.For an HD I'd recommend an Expresscard eSATA adapter, because you're going to use the FireWire bus for an audio interface. The one I have was about $50 and it works really well. I don't know that I agree about IDE being any less stable than SATA, but SATA is what they're selling and you're likely to get more mileage out of it for that reason - unless you're using a Western Digital Raptor, which has a higher performance than any IDE drive (10k RPM and more expensive than the typical Fry's special).If you're running only a few tracks, recording to the internal drive is okay. But if you're recording a lot of tracks then the conventional wisdom is that you don't want to subject your system drive to that kind of a beating.The laptop isn't my main machine, by the way, but you're not using it as your main machine either.

[che]

NickBatzdorf,Thanks for the insight. I will pass along the Expresscard info to the husband. When I mentioned that the SATA is more stable, that's based on the fact that our IDE HD use to crash more often than this SATA. NO blue screens of death. We keep toying with the idea of a mac, but think we might still be too chicken Uncharted waters can be scary!!!! We are pretty fluent with the whole PC thing and are afraid to rock the boat. A mac will most likely be something we do as an extra down the line when it's not so time sensitive. Can't imagine getting familiar with everything we need to master before we leave town. however; we do understand Mac's greatness!!!!!!

[nickbatzdorf]

You can run Windows on the Mac, che. Once it's installed you won't know the difference - it's just the hardware I'm recommending.Well, I do prefer working on Macs even though I have both, but that's a separate issue here. The point is that thousands of musicians are using these laptops for music, so they've been proven to work well for what Justin wants to do.By the way, the Expresscard eSATA adapter I have is the Lycom one on this page. It's the identical card to the Sonnet except for the logo and the price:http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sa ... _Index.php

[che]

yeah I know that they'll run windows, thanksSeems as if Justin is somewhat resistant as we are to switch right now. I'm 100 % sure the Mac is proven because it's pretty much the standard in music and graphic arts. I'm sure we'll end up venturing that way one day. Thanks for the link I will definitely look into that.

[slideboardouts]

Quote:We keep toying with the idea of a mac, but think we might still be too chicken Uncharted waters can be scary!!!! We are pretty fluent with the whole PC thing and are afraid to rock the boat. A mac will most likely be something we do as an extra down the line when it's not so time sensitive. Can't imagine getting familiar with everything we need to master before we leave town. I'm not going to try to convince you to get a mac or anything (though it will probably seem that way), but I do want to point out that it doesn't take any time to learn OSX. Seriously. Everything is pretty much the same as it is in windows except the organization is better IMO, the close/minimize/maximize buttons are on the other side of the screen, and you have a few cool features that make your workflow better. You can still "right" click and on laptops its really cool. You just tap the track pad with 2 fingers If you can't learn how to work OSX within 5 minutes then you have no business doing digital recording as learning to work a DAW is much, much harder. Where your problem would be is that Sonar does not run on macs, so you would have to switch DAWs. Now THAT would be a bit time consuming. Of course you could still use Sonar in windows via bootcamp or parallels, but then what is the point in having a mac if you are going to be playing in windows all day The first night I came home with my mac book pro I had learned my way around OSX, made a beat in garage band, and made a movie with effects within 2 hours. Cake. I personally think that an MBP is the way to go for mobile recording because mac laptops are very competitively priced for what you get and they have a proven track record for audio work right out of the box. Desktop computers I could go either way on, but in the laptop section I think the MBP wins hands down. -Steve

[che]

Steve,I'm not concerned about the OSX. Have used a mac before for graphic work. The main thing is that we aren't ready to commit to a DAW change. We like Sonar and want to stick with it for now. And like you mentioned, there's no real point to getting a mac if I'm gonna run Windows on it. If we get a mac system we would probably use Pro Tools with it. We are looking to keep consistancy . Now, incorporating Pro Tools and a Mac is a future goal, but not for this laptop. Thanks for your input.

[mazz]

I haven't gone e-SATA yet for my main computer (mac desktop) but I'm recording to FW800 external drives with no issues. External drives are the way to go for laptops and I like Nick's idea about the eSATA card. Keep the FW bus for your audio and use the eSATA bus for the hard drive. You'll be glad you did.Mazz

[nickbatzdorf]

"The main thing is that we aren't ready to commit to a DAW change. We like Sonar and want to stick with it for now. And like you mentioned, there's no real point to getting a mac if I'm gonna run Windows on it. If we get a mac system we would probably use Pro Tools with it. "Just to put an even finer point on the spike we've been pounding into your rear end YOU CAN RUN SONAR ON AN APPLE LAPTOP! You don't have to switch DAWs; Justin asked about laptops and these are probably the best ones for what he wants to do.As a matter of fact you can't run Pro Tools LE on the latest Mac OS X (10.5), the ones that today's computers come with. But you can run it under Windows on an MBP.