Hi!
Agreed with Toshibas - this will be probably my buy this autumn (old t30
broke down in july - after 8 years of continuous exploatation, last 4
years it was on for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week).
ThinkPads are reliable - T-series would suit your needs. Thinkwiki.org
will provide you the information needed when you work with Linux and
help you to avoid or solve any problems. Also you can make a comparison
between lines and models. ThinkPads are my personal reccomendation, but
I'm using very old hardware. I have got in my hands only one
Lenovo-branded unit (T60) and it was as solid, as IBMs used to were.
IdeaPad (is this how the budget fancy line is called?) is crap just like
every other cheap stuff. Dunno how are new ThinkPads manufactured, but
definitely stay away from IdeaPads.
Other brand worth consideration is Dell - but again, I have not much
experience. Asus laptops are looking cheap, but the brand seems to be
really concerned of not having too much hardware failures. Again I can
provide no details.
Laptops in general should not be considered as "power horses". Fast ones
are just crazy hot and eat up baterries fast. Sure enough for any gig
anyway.
Be sure to check the noise level when cable-powered, my small laptop
(ThinkPad X31) is little bit noisy when on AC (i mean both internal
sound card makes more noise and CPU sometimes emit sounds).
Avoid glossy/glaze LCD matrix, take trackpoint rather than touchpad, but
that is more than obvious.
If you are going to use Linux software on stage, just drop us a line,
maybe someone somehow somewhere will show up ;)
Cheers,
Luke
W dniu 2010-07-06 16:38, James Harkins pisze:
I posted this over at the electro-music.com forum, where it landed with
an anechoic thud.
I remember there was a thread on this list about machine
recommendations, but that was for netbooks. I'm starting to research
heavier-duty laptops to use as a home-studio machine (which can also be
taken out for gigs).
An addendum to the forum post is that I read somewhere that Toshiba
laptops score high on reliability.
Thanks!
James
---
Thinking ahead (not making an immediate move)...
My trusty MacBook Pro is getting a bit on in years (four years old now)
-- no hardware problems to speak of yet, but this is approaching the
mean time to fail for laptop hard drives. At the same time, I've been
using puredyne Linux on a netbook and enjoying it a lot. (I'd also
consider ubuntu studio but don't need the recent flashy gnome stuff -
puredyne uses xfce4 which, while antiquated vis-à-vis UI features, is
FAST.)
So I'm thinking... rather than wait for my MBP to die and then making a
rush decision, better to research viable Linux audio machines now. (Also
good to get a new machine and have plenty of time to configure it while
the Mac is still up and running.)
I'm looking for:
- a laptop, to take out for live performances;
- fast CPU -- I intend this as my main production machine;
- it does not have to be especially lightweight -- I have a netbook for
traveling;
- HD speed is valuable but not critical -- I mostly use supercollider
and I'm not playing back multiple sound files at the same time (as is
typical in DAWs);
- FireWire connector (or card slot for a FW adapter) is a must (my MOTU
UltraLite still works perfectly and is old enough to be reportedly
supported by FFADO).
I'm wondering what machines people recommend for reliability and
performance. I heard on the sc-users list that ThinkPads were the most
common machine at the last Linux audio conference, but I don't need to
follow the crowd if there's something better.
---
--
James Harkins /// dewdrop world
[email protected]
http://www.dewdrop-world.net
"Come said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet has yet chanted,
Sing me the universal." -- Whitman
blog: http://www.dewdrop-world.net/words
audio clips: http://www.dewdrop-world.net/audio
more audio: http://soundcloud.com/dewdrop_world/tracks
---
[email protected]
http://identi.ca/group/puredyne
irc://irc.goto10.org/puredyne
---
[email protected]
http://identi.ca/group/puredyne
irc://irc.goto10.org/puredyne
