Best current laptop for PT11?

[JCBigler]

I'm at the point of needing to buy a new laptop.

My two main contenders are, the Lenovo W540 and the Apple MacBook Pro.

I'm a Windows guy, and prefer to stay inside Windows for everything I have to do. The Lenovo has a better compliment of ports and an optical drive. The Apple is more expensive, and it looks like their Intel i7 CPU is a generation behind. But I guess I'm not beyond considering it if it will provide more horsepower for Protools.

Other applications that this laptop has to work for are Smaart, Vectorworks, Sketchup, Qlab or SFX, Yamaha Studio Manager, Dante Virtual Sound Card, and some other audio recording application like Reaper because Avid limits Protools to 32 inputs channels at a time (so I need to be able to record 48, even 64 channels at once).

If I'm going to drop 2 grand on a new laptop, which one should it be?

ETA: Also, which one do you think would be more thermally efficient? I have occasion to work in outdoor venues, doing recording and system tuning work during the hot and humid Oklahoma summers.

[JFreak]

I have great experience about MBP and its predecessor PowerBook since 2002 and can nothing but recommend you switch over to OSX.

[sk8te4free7]

If you want a windows laptop, look for hardware specs (always). Ram at least 16GB (pushing it), SSD drive, quadcore 2.3Ghz or more and... graphics card of about 1gb or higher (not really needed for PT but useful for other media projects). That's pretty much what i currently have on a macbook. But i'm pretty sure you can customize any type of laptop whether its a 2009-2012 mabook pro or 2010 windows laptop.

[JFreak]

ThunderBolt might be useful in the coming years...

[JCBigler]

The Lenovo W540 has a Thunderbolt 1 port, 2 USB2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports, can be configured for up to 32GB of RAM and a SSD. It also come with nVidia Quadro 1100M video card with 2GB of video RAM.

To be honest I will probably wipe OSX from the MacBook and just install Windoes on it. So it's all about hardware at this point for me.

[JFreak]

Win has drivers for TB2 ports?

[JCBigler]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Win has drivers for TB2 ports?

Good question. Both Asus and Gagabyte have motherboards with Thunderbolt 2, so I would hope that Windows TB2 drivers aren't far off, if not here already.

[BigJohnD]

[QUOTE=JCBigler;2180290]I'm at the point of needing to buy a new laptop.

My two main contenders are, the Lenovo W540 and the Apple MacBook Pro.


Pro Tools 11 tends to work more reliably on supported laptops.

Check this out:

Avid Knowledge Base
Pro Tools 11 Qualified Windows Computers

Laptops
• HP EliteBook 8570w quad-core Intel i7 processor mobile workstation
• Dell Precision M6700 core i7
• Dell Precision M4700 core "Sandybridge"




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