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  #1  
Old 06-01-2004, 12:12 PM
psus15 psus15 is offline
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Default buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Going to buy a laptop in the next day or so....I currently run an 002r off of my sony VAIO, p4 2.4, 512 ram, etc......I want to be able to take my sessions on the road with me (in a band), and have a smaller set-up for live recordings than my Desktop CPU.

After reading the long BEST LAPTOP FOR PROTOOLS post (LOTS OF INFO) I still am confused on which laptop is the better buy....STANDARD P4 (3.0 ghz or higher), centrino, or AMD 64.

I am deciding between the emachines 6809 (amd 64 3200+), Sony vaio 3.06 P4, or sony vaio centrino (1.5 - 1.7)....All were referenced in the massive laptop post, and I can't get a good read of which is preferable

All the machines have similar specs except for the processors.....

PLEASE, any short advice on which processor is best for protools??

Thanks in advance, and I SWEAR I did go out and read that post....it's just too much to process....(it took my whole lunch hour) I know this is probably an annoying question.....
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  #2  
Old 06-01-2004, 12:29 PM
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Cliffy_Boy Cliffy_Boy is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

If you need battery life, centrino is your only option. Otherwise the P4s are faster and more reliable for PT as they don't have all the built-in power reducing stuff.
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  #3  
Old 06-01-2004, 12:45 PM
Riad Riad is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

I use my Toshiba P25, not only does it have a great 17" screen for working with PT but it's been rock solid, more solid than my DAW. In fact I've never had a problem with that laptop.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/...7&ccid=1291021

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  #4  
Old 06-01-2004, 06:13 PM
waxnsteel waxnsteel is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Riad, I have a P25-S509, and i use a Glyph GT050, I was getting delayed write errors and stuff, but nothing that interfered with Pro Tools once it was already running. I've been able to get 32+1 on the "DaveC" I'd be interested in knowing if you had any tweaks going or anything to improve performance over what I've got going. As for my setup:
P25-S509
2.79GHz
1280MB ram
Digi002
Glyph GT050 external firewire drive.
I get about the same results on my girlfriend's P25 S507 with an Mbox and a Maxtor onetouch USB 2.0 drive. Both are using all of the recommendations from the manual, with the net off, and norton disabled. Thanks, man.
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Old 06-01-2004, 06:38 PM
guy.fi guy.fi is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

I got the eMachines 6805 and it did 32+10 in the DaveC I did one session of 10 tracks to the system drive no problems but I've been getting a lot of weird errors (like 87) in playback both from the system drive and an external FW drive. I've got some more experimentation to do but I may return it.
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  #6  
Old 06-01-2004, 06:49 PM
Riad Riad is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Quote:
Riad, I have a P25-S509, and i use a Glyph GT050, I was getting delayed write errors and stuff, but nothing that interfered with Pro Tools once it was already running. I've been able to get 32+1 on the "DaveC" I'd be interested in knowing if you had any tweaks going or anything to improve performance over what I've got going. As for my setup:
P25-S509
2.79GHz
1280MB ram
Digi002
Glyph GT050 external firewire drive.
I get about the same results on my girlfriend's P25 S507 with an Mbox and a Maxtor onetouch USB 2.0 drive. Both are using all of the recommendations from the manual, with the net off, and norton disabled. Thanks, man.
That's my exact system as well. The very first thing I did was buy Partition Magic and cut the hard disk. The original out of the box Toshiba OS and stuff I left untouched. I created a complete separate Win XP install for Pro Tools... nothing else installed but PT, Nero and plug-ins. I think that's the key, PT is not competing with any other resources. When my system boots I choose Pro Tools or Media Center (the default OS installed). I didn't disable HT as the new versions of PTLE works well with HT.

I've used it with my Mbox, Digi002 and Control|24! It rocks.
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  #7  
Old 06-02-2004, 09:25 AM
waxnsteel waxnsteel is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Cool. Were you getting better track counts? What were they? What's Nero? And Hyper-Threading is working better now? So do you allocate 99% Sorry For all the questions. Were you getting Delayed write errors? Are you using a firewire card, or the 4-pin? But yeah, I totally dig this puter. I have it set up with a second display, and I'm totally lovin it.
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  #8  
Old 06-02-2004, 01:01 PM
psus15 psus15 is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Sorry to chnage the direction of this thread....

I ended up getting the emachines 6809.....the on board firewire is 4 pin, so they gave me a cheap PCMIA (whatever that slot is called) firewire card b/c I told them I needed 6 pin firewire. HOWEVER the firewire didn't work???? Protools loaded up LIGHTNING FAST, but once I got into the program, the firewire light just blinks and I get DAE errors.....

I plug the 002r back into my main CPU (vaio) and it works again....so I am pretty sure it's the cheap 6 pin slot firewire card they gave me....

Can I just buy a 4 to 6 pin firewire cable to fix this problem? I would then be using the onboard firewire card.

I would hate to have to return this laptop, because like I eluded to earlier, comparing the speed of this laptop to my P4 2.4 VAIO, this thing SMOKES!!! (of course I can't do a protools "DAVEC" type test yet since I can't get the darn thing working)

Thanks for any advice you may have!!

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  #9  
Old 06-02-2004, 01:21 PM
AfricanCaneKing AfricanCaneKing is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop

I bought an HP ze5560us laptop a few months ago and it runs so well with protools/mbox that i wonder where all these 'i have a problem' posts come from. Here are the specs and some of the features that made it a dream PT/mbox laptop for me

Pentium4 2.30Ghz
512Mb RaM
40Gb HDD
DVD/CD Burner >>> wonderful for making those huge backups, DVD/Rs store 4.5 Gb
15inch LCD with an external monitor port >>> Dual monitor system right out the box !!!
3 (very stable) USB ports >>> mbox, midiman 4x4, and usb mouse.

Whats gr8 is i didnt have to do anything special, str8 out the box i turn on Laptop, install PT plus plugins, hook up mbox and i was good to go. i havent run the davec test but the system is more than enough for what i do. one of my typical sessions includes: 8 - 16 midi tracks runnning through my triton, 8 - 16 audio tracks with FX for midi to audio music, 4 - 8 audio tracks with fx for the vocals, 1 master and 4 - 6 auxillary buses. I rarely have problems the only time i did was after working on about 7 different PT sessions one after another for about 4 hours, before getting the 'CPU tasks' error message. so i just logged out to clear up my RAM logged back in and was back in business

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  #10  
Old 06-02-2004, 01:25 PM
Riad Riad is offline
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Default Re: buying a laptop /HELP!!/I did read the laptop post

Quote:
Sorry to chnage the direction of this thread....

I ended up getting the emachines 6809.....the on board firewire is 4 pin, so they gave me a cheap PCMIA (whatever that slot is called) firewire card b/c I told them I needed 6 pin firewire. HOWEVER the firewire didn't work???? Protools loaded up LIGHTNING FAST, but once I got into the program, the firewire light just blinks and I get DAE errors.....

I plug the 002r back into my main CPU (vaio) and it works again....so I am pretty sure it's the cheap 6 pin slot firewire card they gave me....

Can I just buy a 4 to 6 pin firewire cable to fix this problem? I would then be using the onboard firewire card.

I would hate to have to return this laptop, because like I eluded to earlier, comparing the speed of this laptop to my P4 2.4 VAIO, this thing SMOKES!!! (of course I can't do a protools "DAVEC" type test yet since I can't get the darn thing working)

Thanks for any advice you may have!!


Just get a 4 to 6 pin firewire cable. If the built in firewire card still does not work check the digi site for recommended firewire cards for laptops.... there was also a really good thread a while back where someone really nailed what you need so do a search for that.
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