Getting started!

[Spanglish]

Hi!

You all seem very knowledgeable so I think you can help me.

I want to get Pro Tools LE and an m-box and I want to get a Mac laptop as well. I think a MacBook Pro will be best.

Can someone please tell me any concerns I should have, is there anything I'm over-looking?
For example how will I be able to create memory locations and things like that without having a numeric keypad?

Also, should I get a 15" or 17" would be better?

And does anyone have a setup like the one I want to get (MacBook Pro with Pro Tools)?
Pros? Cons? Why did you get this and not a Mac Pro?

Thank you all very much.

S.

[albee1952]

I'm sure you will get several opinions so take mine with a grain of salt. A MacBook Pro should be great with pro tools. I would get at least 2gigs of RAM. As for the screen size, it depends on how portable you want to be. One school of thought is the bigger, the better(once you edit audio on a larger screen, a 15" might seem really tight). You can also add a second monitor(I believe) which helps a lot(I like to have the edit window on one screen and the mix window and plugins on the other). There is a recommended USB port to use(I don't remember but someone else will. I think its the port farthest AWAY from the screen) and you will want to get a firewire external drive for audio sessions(my fav is the OWC drives but LaCie and Glyph are popular, as are certain other brands but you NEED to have a drive that uses the Oxford chipset(911, 924, etc) or it may not work with pro tools.

[Spanglish]

Thank you for your response, albee1952!

I found something on Digi's website:

Due to internal USB architecture issues on the MacBook Pro, use of Digidesign, M-Audio, or third-party USB
audio devices is supported on the left-hand USB ports only (the port or ports next to the power adapter cable).

I think thats what you were talking about. I'm used to using dual monitors for Pro Tools so guess I should get the 17" then!
Plus the 17" MacBook Pros come with "4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 memory".
I guess thats even better than what what you said right?

S.

[Spanglish]

On second thought, I think I'll get the 15" with 4GB of RAM and get the dual display adaptor. Much cheaper!

Edit: But please feel free to add any additional comments. Thanks!

S.

[1ace1]

+1 on what albee says.

Watch out for the USB port being dodgy. The newer MacBooks do not suffer from this problem as much but the older powerbook G4 laptops do, badly. Some of the older ones cannot even power the MBox2 at all!!

The latest intel Macbook should be fine.

A:)

[M_S_D]

I also read recently, cant remember where, that apple have decided that firewire is a dying protocol and that they will stop including it in their machines. This may limit your choice of audio/backup drive.

You may want to check on this though, I am not sure if the above is in any way true............

[DigiTechSupt]

I also read recently, cant remember where, that apple have decided that firewire is a dying protocol and that they will stop including it in their machines.

I'm not sure where they're reading that, but it's completely false. Apple have no plans on dropping firewire. They are however moving to FW800, and soon the next generation of firewire, on their machines.

[hki]

I have the 17 MacBook Pro running PT 7.4.2, Reason4, Waves plugins with an OWC ext drive attached.. No Problems! If I need more screen real estate, I just connect a monitor otherwise toggling back and forth it's a big deal.

2.5 cents