recommended laptops - is the cheapest any good?

[howdoesitfeel]

the acer aspire 1360 series laptop is recommended for use with pro tools m-powered, and costs about £400, whereas others on the recommended list cost upwards of £1000 (with more inbetween).

my question is basically, where would i lose out if i buy the cheap acer to run pro tools? surely if it's on the recommended list it must do everything okay, right?

i'd really appreciate some help on this one because my money is precious to me and while i do want to get a bargain machine, i don't want to risk awful performance (i am, after all, buying it primarily so i can get pro tools hardware).

thanks.

[spkguitar]

Sorry, I am afraid "bargain" and "performance" are two words that do not go together when talking about any system to run Pro Tools.

Where do you see that the Acer 1360 is recommended for PTMP? The only Acer mentioned on the Compatibility page (http://www.digidesign.com/compato/xp/ma/) is the Travelmate C300.

There is an Acer recommended by PTLE users over in the BestLaptopforLE (http://duc.digidesign.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=UBB32&Number=470179&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=7&fpart=1) thread, But that's the 1524 which has the Athlon 64 3400 processor in it.

The 1360 uses the Sempron processor, which is kind of like AMD's version of the Intel Celeron. The celeron is not recommended at all for PT, and I imagine the Sempron would get the same results, (though I can't speak from personal knowledge). The 1360 also only comes with 256MB RAM installed. PT requires at least 384MB, and recommends (as do I) 512MB.

I know of one other person running PT on a 1360, DUCuserFinnish (http://tinyurl.com/7cnmz), But complains of poor performance, and regrets the purchase.


Bottom line; my opinion is that you will be disappointed with the performance of that machine. Bite the bullet and spend the extra money to get one of the recommended machines from either of the two links I posted. Why risk being frustrated and disappointed? Get one that is known to work well and perform.

[howdoesitfeel]

hey,

first of all, many thanks for your advice.

secondly, my apologies, because i was talking about the wrong thing. i don't want pro tools M-Powered, i want a pro tools M-Box, with pro tools LE 6.9. for M-Box the laptops recommended are:

• Acer Aspire 1360 (VIA K8)
• Acer Aspire 1522 (Athlon 64, VIA K8)
• Acer TravelMate C300 Tablet PC
• Dell Precision Workstation M60
• Dell Inspiron 9300 (Pentium M, 915PM chipset)
• Dell Inspiron 6000
• Dell Inspiron 8500 (Pentium 4-M)
• Dell Inspiron 8600
• Dell Inspiron 600m (Centrino)
• HP Compaq Business Notebook nx8000
• IBM ThinkPad R40 Series
• IBM ThinkPad R50 Series
• IBM ThinkPad T Series (including T43 model)
• Toshiba Satellite 1900 series

hence why i can see the acer 1360 on the recommended laptops list, and you can't - i've asked about the wrong compatibility list, in the wrong forum (i think). that said, i'm grateful to you for pointing out about the RAM, because it doesn't seem to add up that 512 is recommended (for whatever pro tools system) and this laptop is recommended too.

anyway this was supposed to be just a quick note to say thanks (and sorry!), and it's already getting quite long, so i'll leave it at that.