New production laptop?

Hi. I'm moving my production environment to a laptop. The new ivy bridge i7 mobile processors have just come out. On the other hand theres the new enthusiasm for ultrabooks a la macbok air. Im getting a win laptop though. I'd like your opinion on how much power i would be needing. Since i never really got anything big going on my desktop, someone with more experience on bigger projects could advice me. New i7 mobile processors are more powerful than my desktop i7 920! They eat up battery which i sometimes will be using. Ultrabooks with 1,7ghz low voltage processors will give more hours on a battery. Which way to go? How much cpu You need? Any opinion on screen size and ram on a laptop?

Any experiences on laptops in general?

Will be using kontakt and guitar rig quite much on Fl studio.

 

I'm using an i7 sandy bridge with 8 mb ram 17" monitor. I use an external eSATA 1gb drive and it has an internal 1 gb hd. Takes everything I throw at it. The CPU is 2.2 ghz with boost to 3.0.

 

Seems like a nice setup. Do you have projects, samples or what in your esata and does it work as good as the internal hd? And Would you consider 17" a bigimprovement over 15"?

Do you ever/ often work close to the limit of you hardware (cpu, ram) or would a weaker system suffice? Does the cpu often boost and have you had any heat problems?

 

The eSATA drive holds the libraries. It performs better than the internal since the internal is a laptop drive running at 5400rpm. The external is a desktop drive running at 7200rpm.

I like a large screen and the tradeoff is portability. Still portable enough for me.

I haven't bumped the hardware limit yet. Using this for live playing running Kore 2 with 8 plugins including 2 instances of Kontakt and 2 instances of Omnisphere.

I have never noticed the boost function and don't know if it kicks in or not. It gets warm but never hot.

 

Thanks! Anybody use those 1,6ghz low voltage ultrabook style processors?

 

In the past, I tried Komplete 6 on an Asus EeePC (1.6 Ghz Atom processor), mainly Guitar Rig and on some presets there was not enough power to handle it, crackling, delays, etc. so I wouldn't recommend it.

I also have a 17" laptop, it's an Acer TravelMate 7720, I bought it in december 2008 it's a 2.0 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 GB RAM. It has quality components in it (Texas Instruments Firewire interface, Intel graphics, etc.), it lacks DVI, HDMI and eSata ports but one interesting feature it has space for a second internal sata hard drive.

Since I got it, I upgraded it to Win7 32 bits (it came with XP), upgraded the internal HD to 320 GB (7200 rpm) for OS and programs and added a second internal 750 GB HD (7200 rpm). The drawback was I really had a hard time finding the cable for the second HD, I am in Canada, the cable was only available in Europe and the stores who had it wouldn't ship to Canada. I got it when my niece went to Portugal to visit friends.

This computer handles Komplete 8 Ultimate quite well so I guess that any modern 15" or 17" laptop should work nicely. Try to find out if someone is still making 17" laptops with space for a second internal hard drive WITH INCLUDED CONNECTORS, it is very convenient.

HTH

 

So far, my Alienware M14x performs with Ableton Live every bit as well as my 2-year old custom DAW desktop. I've noticed no difference when playing the same project on either system, and CPU usage is identical (although I'm not sure how meaningful that metric is). Anyway, if you perform live, this thing has backlit keys, which could prove helpful in a dark room, and the case is gorgeous.

The specs of my Alienware:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 2670M 2.2GHz
• RAM: 6GB DDR3
• Screen: 14.0” 900p/1600x900
• Video: NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M with 3GB DDR3
• Storage: 750GB 7200RPM
• WiFi: Intel Advanced-N WiFi Link 6250 a/g/n with WiMax
• Optical: Slot-load Dual Layer DVD burner
• OS: 64-bit Windows 7 Home

I should note, however, that it doesn't have a FireWire port or a Cardbus/PC Card slot. Plenty of USB ports though.

This is what it looks like.