Laptop Guidance pleaseb

http://www.marksandspencer.com/Sony...2_1344629773_a2fa8af213b627b398e2b119ddc440d4

Hi all.

After a while messing about with Maschine, I have taken advantage of the Komplete deal just offered.

Whilst waiting for it to arrive I have begun to wonder about how my current laptop (dell i3 2310; 4gb ram;230gb hd) will cope.

A friend has just bought the above machine...s Sony Vaio i7, huge harddrive, could prob do with a bit more ram (only 4gb)

im guessing this will be a lot better at coping than my current machine and i like the idea of a 1600 x 900 display

I know when I bought my laptop for Traktor users on this forum were really helpful suggesting what to avoid and look for and helped me know end directly and indirectly

So, i throw myself on your mercys' and wisdom again - whad'ya think about this?

thanks
daniel

 

the dell should be perfectly fine with maschine, but you can improve performance by cleaning up the system drive, defragging, anti-virus, make sure you don't have any resource hogs running in the background, get rid of superfluouos **** from the startup tab of the sys config (msconfig), stop all the unnecessary telephony/network/remote/random services in the service manager, etc. - all the typical stuff that slows windows down.

yes, it may run better on that newer laptop but you won't be gaining much bang for your buck there.

the screen real estate is more important for traktor, where there are lots of things happening on screen. with maschine, once you are comfortable with the hardware you barely need to look at a monitor.

komplete is pretty hefty in terms of disk space required - some 100 gigs or so. and once you start adding lots of wav files here and there as you make songs, they too will start taking up a fair bit of space! so, you might wanna get a bigger hdd some day.

if you find it is too slow dealing with big projects, then you may consider an upgrade to your lappy. let us know how it goes!

 

hi

yep, ive got a dab hand an optimising due to my traktor experience. that laptop runs like a dream for what i do.

mashine runs fine on this i3 - love it. im just worried about the komlete stuff. i plan to use an external HD for most of the install and then see how it goes.

you are right i should try it first - i think just gear lust and a potential deal have caught my eye not my mind

i will hold fire and report back if i struggle

thank you for good advice!

 

You got some good advice from iiiiii. I wouldn't upgrade yet but it's your call.

FYI
Maschine can choke quite easily when you add vst's.

I'm sure you know maschine has become a vst host since 1.6 but is still not multicore. So everything you do in maschine gets loaded on ONE core. So maschine will sometimes perform better on a dual core with a high top frequency - think turbo mode with lots of Ghz - than on a powerfull quad core with a lower top frequency. It all depends on the cpu model though and top frequency isn't everything, check for benchmarks for a more accurate picture. Until Maschine gets multicore support ( not happening in 1.8 ),
you'll have to work around it's limitations.
If your more of a sampling kind of guy and don't use that many vst's, it shouldn't be a problem though.

A nice workaround is having multiple instances of Maschine open in a host like Ableton Live, since each instance gets it's own core ( in a host that supports multiple cores load balancing that is, but all the recent big one's should )

But you still have to switch between instances and it's still a hassle for people that would prefer to work in standalone mode.

If you'd like to upgrade, I have an unbeatable offer for US residents ( no luck , I live in Belgium )

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/coupon-new-hp-pavilion-dv7t-17-3inch-notebook/11471.aspx

With coupon you get 1299 laptop for 799$ with free upgrade to 8gig ram , free upgrade to bluray player, and a 1 TB hdd. Seems like incredible value for money since it is a 17 inch laptop with an i7 ivy bridge quad core (third generation). I found the deal on geek.com and wish we could have awesome deals like that in Belgium.

Have fun making music!

 

hi

no im in the uk so sadly im ineligible too

but ive decided to wait.

now just have to hope komplete arrvies soon...hurry up


thanks guys!

 

I always suggest a mac. A mac eliminates all the audio driver BS you deal with in Windows-land, and they're just plain easy to maintain. You pay a slight premium for the hardware, but the hardware and software are vetted together as an item.

This is not to say you can't do everything you'd want in Windows, I just find a Mac is more conducive to my creative workflow.