Advice on a Laptop

[DonaldM]

Would appreciate some advice on getting a new laptop as my old Dell Latitude E5530 is beginning to disintegrate.



I will NOT be using this for anything related to mixing or recording with Pro Tools. Besides personal and work related use (mainly, MS Office stuff), I also use it when I play live with my Church's band. I need something powerful enough to run Reason, Omnisphere, and/or Falcon 2 for sure. I use fairly elaborate set ups sometimes with multilayered sounds and/or multiple controller splits. The Dell often runs into CPU issues, so I have to scale back the layers or splits.



We use a Yamaha MOXF as the main controller via USB connection. This allows all the audio from the laptop to pass through the MOXF out to the sound system with a separate gain fader on the MOXF for that. I often mix, say, Reason rack set ups with something from the MOXF as well for example, using the MOXF's Master Mode to set up everything. Switching sounds and setups is a matter of pressing 1 button!



I'm thinking 1TB SSD, i7 Intel Core, 16GB DRAM. Any suggestions on make/models I should consider? My budget for this is probably $750 Max.



Thanks for any suggestions.

[EGS]

This? https://www.newegg.com/dell-latitude...quicklink=true

[unkJE]

Hi Donald - hope all's good in your world!

I love my Lenovo W520 (427637U) – here’s one (I’m not the Seller!):

Lenovo ThinkPad W520 15.6" 1080p Gaming Laptop Core i7 16GB 500GB SSD NVIDIA W10

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thin...AAAOSwLcZet3gq

5th picture shows RHS: you can remove the DVD/CD player and add a caddy to house a 2nd HDD or SSD, whilst the slot to the left of this takes my Firewire 2-Port Express Card to connect my Mbox 3 Pro.

On the LHS, a Firewire IEEE 1394 for MINI DV HDV, next to an eSATA port.

There’s 2 @ USB3 on the LHS and a powered USB2 on the rear RHS.

For 6 extra USB ports and 2 extra Monitor screens, I bought the Lenovo
ThinkPad Mini Dock Plus Series 3 (Type 4338)

[DonaldM]

Thanks for the suggestions. Appreciate it.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

Thanks for the suggestions. Appreciate it.

Whatever you get for a laptop make sure it can run plugged in all the time as I doubt you'd want to have the battery die on you in the middle of services. I had a Toshiba Satellite 1955 that was picky that way and the battery would get quite warm turning on the internal fan (which was all kinds of noisy). My guess is/was the battery overheating and not the cpu from what I felt around the case.

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Whatever you get for a laptop make sure it can run plugged in all the time....

Solid logic: I see the battery as backup only.

My Lenovo W520 (427637U) laptop came with a 9 Cell ThinkPad 70++ (0A36303) Battery, which is better than the 6 Cell.

Noticed the eBay item I mentioned has now been sold, but I’ve seen quite a few listed – they keep cropping up.

When buying on eBay, I look for a Seller with lots of sales and high Feedback – this one had 1465 sales and 100% Positive feedback.

I like paying via PayPal, because if you don’t get what’s advertised, or if the item is damaged or lost in transit, you can get a refund. Buyer pays return Shipping and the refund can take a couple of months, but that's way better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick!

[DonaldM]

Good points all around. I always keep my laptop plugged in unless I'm somewhere where its not feasible or possible. Even on this older Dell the battery will give me 1-2 hours depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes a bit longer.



With the Church set up I have a plug right where I set up, so that's not an issue!