You might want to take a look at those new lenovo Thinkpads, especially the X series.
I have been using a thinkpad x60s with OpenBSD/PureDyne for a while now, and I'm very happy with it. It is very lightweight, hardware works great with opensource drivers, and it has good baery life. This one is an IBM though, but still it seems to what I heard that thinkpads remain highly reliable. Compared to my MBP (probably the same as you have, revision 1,1), also running OpenBSD/PureDyne, hardware works better and out of the box when it comes to have free software only (even though the mac is now old enough to have okay-working drivers). I think this is an important aspect to take into consideration if you don't want to mess around with -mm patches and so :) -- またな Kereoz On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 10:38:18PM +0800, James Harkins wrote: > > 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
