Best Laptops for Pro Tools LE

[thopman]

I have the M6809, and I can highly recommend the eMachines notebooks (all of them). As near as I can tell, the 10 & 11 have a slightly faster Athlon 64 chip than the 09, and the 11 has a larger hard disk than the 10 (I think). All very similar, though . . .

As for the eMachines notebooks vs. a desktop, the main issue will be expandability vs. portability. The notebooks max out at 1.25 GB of RAM (unless you go deep inside, and void the warranty, in which case you can go to 2 GB max). A desktop can go well above this. Similarly, you have more options as to internal hard disks with a desktop. Having said that, the notebooks are portable, of course.

All things said, the notebooks are a worthy desktop-replacement for PTLE, as long as you can live with the RAM limits (the jury is still out on that for me, as I am on backorder for a 1 GB chip for mine).

--Terry

[AWright]

I've been recording with my eMachines 6811 and DigiRack 002 for a couple of months now, and once I got past the "I didn't get into this to be a friggin' computer programmer!!!" stage, I've been much happier. Read everything you can on this forum about your specific laptop or PC choice and make the tweaks that work for others. EDurney really has some great info about what to do to make the 6809/6810/6811 work well. It's amazing that such random, seemingly unrelated things make such a huge difference in protools performance, but it is probably the advanced level of the technology combined with my ignorance of computers that make it seem so.

My biggest improvement in performance came after setting up the laptop as a "Standard PC", and then getting everything but the firewire connection off of the firewire IRQ slot. I'm recording on the system (C:\) drive and using my external Pacific Pro Audio drive as a backup/storage drive only, connected via a USB2 port on another IRQ. I am writing this from a completely separate computer, but if you want to use the same computer for the internet, etc., follow Eduardo's advice about setting up a separate operating system profile (or whatever it's called) for this purpose.

I was almost ready at one point to sell the whole rig and buy a 1" 16-track analog deck and some razor blades, but now I realize that the flexibility that the DAW offers is far superior. Even if you have to warm it up a little with some good analog gear or other techniques, you can get really nice sound quality combined with very flexible editing capabilities and an intuitive interface that becomes very hard to let go of.

[lambchops]

Thanks brothermen...I appreciate your input and advice. I will check out the site for more info. I am still not sure which way to go...PC or laptop? We'll see what the other info brings and go from there. Thanks again for your time.

Peace.

[dubrichie]

how's it going people?

have recently invested in the 002R, loving the protools software, but having some serious problems getting it up and going on my laptop.

the laptop is a Dell Latitude C640, with the Intel 845MP chipset, P4 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM.
i'm using an EMagic CH 6000S - CardBus USB / FireWire adapter to connect both the 002R and an external Maxtor OneTouch 160GB hard drive to the Dell laptop, using the external hard drive to record audio.

i also have both Win 2000 and Win XP installed on the same C: drive as Protools, this is not partitioned at all.

i recently updated to the latest Intel Chipset Drivers and to the latest Dell BIOS (v. A10).

the external hard drive is working just fine with the USB ports and firewire ports on the CardBus USB / FireWire adapter, but when i start up ProTools i get "DAE ERROR 1115", accompanied by the green 1394 LED on the front of the 002R going off and ProTools promptly insistung upon quitting.

please, i need some reolution to this clash of the technologies and am at the end of my tether and techspertise.

richie.

[ericmoney40]

Hi, newbie here.

Has anyone tested the Gateway AMD laptops with a 002r or 002? I was all set to buy an E-Machines 6810, but now I can't find them anywhere. Does anyone know either if E-machines plans to put out an upgrade soon? Since Gateway owns E-Machines is it safe to assume that their AMD laptops are compatable like the E-Machines? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[thopman]

From everything I have seen, the new Gateway's are virtually identical to the eMachines, and are essentially just "re-labelled".

I would assume that they will perform just as well (which is to say, very well).

--Terry

[mstucker]

Anyone have experience with the eMachines 6805 or 6807? There are some really good deals on these but I wanted to make sure. Particularly if they have separate IRQs for firewire, video, and PCMCIA slot.

thanks,

[Slemmu]

Hi everyone!
Just wanted to ask if somebody knows is Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1630 compatible with 002r?
To me the specs of this machine looks fine otherwise, but it has AMD 64 pros with SIS(?) chipset.
here is the URL to the specs http://www.fujitsu-siemens.fi/kotipc...N141200017.pdf
Thanks.

[lolasia]

Thanks to everyone's input here on laptop recommendations. I got the M6811 (by default, it's the only one I could find left!). I'm noticing some issues that started either when I added the administrator password (in safe mode, not just an admin account) or when I installed Service Pack 2 and I'm wondering if anyone else has the same:

1) When logging into a LIMITED (not admin) account, I get an error from FlashIcon: "Can not find ini". Anyone else getting this? (By the way, FlashIcon seems to have something to do with the media card readers.)

2) In the Documents and Settings folders of EACH account (limited and admin), there's an identical file called "results.txt", which has the following:
log=AEGIS Protocol (network component): Uninstalled.
message=Driver Uninstall was successful
log=AEGIS Protocol (device driver): Stopped.
log=AEGIS Protocol (C:\WINDOWS\inf\mdc8021x.PNF): Deleted.
log=AEGIS Protocol (C:\WINDOWS\inf\mdc8021x.inf): Deleted.
log=AEGIS Protocol (C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\mdc8021x.sys): Deleted.
code=0

I'm concerned because AEGIS has something to do with wireless security. I haven't been able to find anything further on this, and the eMachines folks are being pretty useless. Now, I'm also noticing that these files all have modified dates of 6/31/04, which is BEFORE I had this PC. Also, the created dates are October 31st, which MAY have been the day I first activated the PC.

So, I'm thinking maybe this has nothing to do with SP2. Does anyone else have this file in the user folders under "Documents and Settings"? Any further information on this? Anyone else get that "can not find ini" error?

Thanks, I know this is not ProTools related, but I couldn't get info anywhere else and I know there's a lot of users here.

[hilliard]

Anybody know for sure if the RAM upgrade to 1.25GB (or whatever...keeping the 256 standard in the warranty-voiding mem slot + 1 GB swap in the trapdoor mem slot) is a bonus to PTLE?

I've got the emachines m6810, and have pondered the mem upgrade (using the info in this forum from WKG about the Outpost.com chip part# 4158153).

Any issues with doing this mem swap?

Will it really improve any PT activity, or would it only really improve other apps, such as high graphic gaming, etc?

I'm only using my emachines for PTLE at the moment (digi002r), so if it's only really gonna help out other apps, I might as well save the $$$.

BUT, if it will impact my PTLE experience (not that I have any issues yet), then is it worth the $$$?

Anybody actually do it yet?

WKG, I know you were getting one....how'd it go?