8Gb or 16Gb?

[Acoustica Greg]

Laptops are often designed to preserve battery life and avoid overheating, not for high performance.

[Juno]

Agree with Mark, and i'd like to add: if you're not a gamer, then you're paying a lot for a gamer's video card you'd never need. Better save some money there and get a HDD with 7200 RPM as i'm almost certain you will notice the difference sooner or later. The read and write speed of the HD is very important for audio processing.

These drives cannot cause the price difference you mention, as they are around $70.

And if you get a simple videocard you get more space and less heat inside the laptop which is also important - i burnt 4 GB of memory last winter (playing heavy games, but still).

[Perennial Jive]

thanks for the replies,folks.

I dont game and specifically want to get a machine just for music,need a laptop as opposed to a desktop though in order to stay portable....seems like all the 7200rpm laptops are specifically made for gamers.

[Mark Bliss]

Machines marketed to gamers (probably the largest consumer level market for high performance PC's by a significant margin) have many of the features that you would want for running a DAW, that's why those product lines are often recommended.
A SSD is another option to consider. Though pricey, one could use a smaller performance on board drive and use common and affordable external drives for backup and archiving. This is one potential compromise for a modest performance laptop based DAW I think?

[Perennial Jive]

hey folks,more kind thanks for your replies and patience,-what would your thoughts be on a quad core i5 laptop that runs at 7200rpm? will it cut the mustard? this is the laptop in question:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 6-pdt.html

[Mark Bliss]

Well....
That should certainly cut a lot of mustard anyway!

A lot to like there. Not only does it have a 1Tb 7200 drive, which should provide the drive performance we have been discussing, but it is complimented by a modest SSD which properly configured should be even better for where performance is really needed.

The i5 quad and 8 Gb RAM should be sufficient for some pretty powerful work.

I'll be watching for other peoples opinions, as I am open to learning more on this myself. But I think it looks like you would do pretty well at that price point, and anything significantly more powerful would likely be at a pretty stiff price increase.

Not a deal breaker, but things I would want to know before a final decision.
Can more RAM be added if desired? It would be nice to have that option.
That graphics card is likely to support an additional monitor, as most well below that range do. But I would seek confirmation.

You could send me one for evaluation, and I would be glad to fully fill you in on my hands on experience......

[Perennial Jive]

thanks Mark,this forum has no equal to the helpfulness of its members and moderators and its such a brilliant platform to learn from.
I have been using a machine with a third of those specs of the above mentioned one with Mixcraft for the last 4 years and for what feels like forever i have been having to render tracks to be able to actually listen to them with my cpu constantly being overloaded,so much so that i now have a bucket of sketches and haven't actually completed anything in ages,i am looking forward to having more power and hopefully pushing the envelope a bit further,will probably take another week or so before i make my mind up.

[Juno]

That's a nice peace of work; i have a similar configuration with the disks and it's a pleasure.

I still think the video adapter is costing you too much for your needs (around $150-$200). I have a heavy secondary video card (...gaming...), and NVIDIA technology determines which of the two must be used for each program. It's never been assigned to any application other than games, and some drawing programs (and i did those manually). It's doing nothing when dawwing the mix out of Mixcraft.

So i tried to find some sites where you can configure basic laptop components yourself. I found some, but not good enough. And you're right: i found no laptops with a 7200 rpm disk that didn't have a huge gaming adapter.
The idea is of course to get rid of it, you just need a simple video card that still allows a high resolution, maybe 2 outputs[*]? Then use the money for some extra RAM and/or perhaps a larger SSD, or whatever you like of course.

My own primary video adapter: integrated graphics, Intel HD 3000, it offers 1920x1080 as max resolution (the screen/monitor must still be able to accept this setting to display it!), 1 video Out (very common on even cheaper laptops) and there's also a HDMI Out. But these are all on the motherboard or modules, so if extra outputs for video are important, you should actually try to find what the back side looks like, or ask the seller.

Which brings me to... Why not find some local stores? Preferably one where repairs are done, too (instead of sending them over to laptop-repair-hell). Explain what you need and what your budget is (but make it around $100 less than what your actual budget is). You can use the specs of the Asus you linked as a reference. If no such shops exist where you live, you can still try the same with some online sellers.

It depends how much effort those $175 are worth to you

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[*]It's possible that the screen on the laptop won't work when two external monitors are connected and in use. My laptop can connect to my 2nd monitor and my tv (hdmi), but if i use both, then my laptop screen switches off.

[Mark Bliss]

Couldn't agree more.

The problem here is that I am not aware of many local vendors that mess with configuring laptops. Seems they only mess with desktops. So you are kind of stuck with what is "on the shelf."

Buying local would have saved me a huge headache on my computer purchase this year. When it turned out to have problems, returning it or for that matter, getting any useful assistance, turned out to be an obstacle. Had I purchased it locally, I think I might have had someone to deal with who might act like they had a stake in resolving the problem. Or at least acted like they cared at all. Getting a great price online was certainly not a very good deal.

[Juno]

Yes, configuring a laptop's hardware is not as easy as a desktop.

But swapping a 5700 rpm disk for a 7200 rpm disk wouldn't be very hard. You could therefore find a cheaper laptop that has everything you need, apart from that disk, and swap the disks yourself.
But on cheaper laptops the screen often doesn't support high resolutions, so that's creating a new problem - if high res is important (for me it is: the more screen space Mixcraft has, the better).

A handy vendor shouldn't really have trouble to swap a disk (basic operation) and remove the big adapter (which should also always be possible), and can make sure all the necessary video connectors are there, so you'd have all the hardware you need. These vendors do repairs, so they don't really 'not sell' the adapter. When you use that saved money for some extra ram/larger SSD, you still spend the same amount and everyone could be happy.

Most vendors that i know would only do it if you buy the whole thing there. That's where the slightly lower budget comes in: they'd probably want some money for adjusting the hardware.

My town (i indeed own it ) is littered with these small computer repair shops and they know it, so it's not so hard to find a place that does all this.