Best Laptops for Pro Tools LE

[wangell]

In that case I may just go for the standard display.

Good choice. Stay far away from the TrueLife display. I'm hoping the 3M stuff comes tomorrow and works otherwise this machine is going back the end of this week. It's useless if you can't see the display.

[puremusic]

I recently got an Acer Aspire 9500 from my work and installed PTLE 7 with my 002r.
My fan and cpu freaked out. So this is not recomended. Today I tried a RME Fireface 800
and it worked wonderful. So my recomendation is to jump ship instead of letting Digi
dictate what machine you shall buy when other manufactors get´s it to work.
I can manage 50+ mono tracks with Cubase SX on my laptop just running the internal
harddrive and choose whatever audointerface I want.
So I´m out.

Peter

[Aussie Scott]

Did PT7 work though??? Inquiring minds need to know!! - and we all know about the 100% CPU thingy.

[puremusic]

Yes, it worked.

[Aussie Scott]

Any indication of the performance - could it handle 32 track / did you do a daveC test etc ???

I appreciate anything you can tell me with regards to these laptops as I think it's where I'm headed. The new Mac Book Pro's are a little beyond my means unfortunately.

Cheers, Scott

[puremusic]

I´m sorry I can´t give you more info on this. I uninstalled it when I
noticed that nearly every program that has to do with audio caused the
cpu and fan freaking out.Like Finale 2006, Wavelab 5, Vegas 6 and SX3.Programs I use
a lot just running the internal audio.Even thuogh I did´nt have my 002r
conncted something caused this weird behavior.

But if I can run 50+ without a hitch in SX 3 I´m almost sure you can run 32 in PTLE 7.
It´s a good machine I must say.

Peter

[Aussie Scott]

Thanks puremusic - that's helpful.

[Ainzboogie]

So, I've been able to live with the E1705 for a week or two now, and I have to tell you all- the E1705 is both a blessing and a curse.

The laptop itself is absolutly stunning, the screen amazing, and dual-core processor butt-kicking. Every app I run on it works flawlessly, whether on Media Center or Professional. (I'm running dual partitions) With a few coupons, you can't come close to Dell's e1705 price/performance from any manufacturer (PC or Mac.)

Why the mixed review? Digi's 7.0 is really whiney. I've disabled everything on the laptop- wireless, ethernet, OEM sound, etc and it some times works great, other times poorly.

Gripes: 7.0 still has some "phantom" issues about not wanting to playback on my Lacie (external 7200rpm firewire drive. first in chain, too.) It'll play off the 5400rpm internal drive fine, but not the external. What gives? Maybe it's the Lacie. Other problem: Sometimes PT7 won't record on 2 track sessions with zero plugs running, others it'll run a 30 track session with plugs out the ying, and let you quickpunch with no problem. Want another? Anyone have the "buffer set too low" "buffer set too high" problem? Still not resolved with 7.1. (Gluttons for punishment: if anyone would like to see the specks on it, I'll post it in another thread, just ask.)

My consensus on the the E1705? Digi is the problem. It's a bit premature to say that, but if force d to make a call, I'd blame it on Digi. The stability is such an issue with 7 I can't even begin to tell you if the video card thing is even an issue. Perhaps it is. Given Digi's silence on some of the problems, it's hard to know what's my problem and what's theirs.

For all my complaining, I'm still a Digi guy. I've used it since 4 and almost every incarnation of the software TDM and LE on both platforms. I know it well. I've always had my systems running great. It's just recently that this has been a headache.

Well I decided to make the leap and get the E1705. I do agree it's one hella of a machine. I decided to get the 2GHz Duo Core Processor with the free 1GB mem, 80GB 7200 RPM HD. Got Media Center cuz I didn't want to pay the xtra $150 for XP PRO plus I had copies of them already. NOW, here is my issue, I've installed XP PRO on a separate partition. I was able to use a Dell XP PRO Disc with SP2 for install. I don't see in my device manager the place to disable the ACPI there. I'm wondering if it has to do with the DEll Disc. I did do a standard PC install on this. Right now in ProTools 7 it only shows one processor when it should say two. Just wondering what I'm doing wrong. If anybody can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it as I know this laptop will work. Thanks. Oh yeah, I have a MBox hooked up to it. Haven't tried my 002Rack yet. Thanks for the help in advance.

[Ainzboogie]

Well I decided to make the leap and get the E1705. I do agree it's one hella of a machine. I decided to get the 2GHz Duo Core Processor with the free 1GB mem, 80GB 7200 RPM HD. Got Media Center cuz I didn't want to pay the xtra $150 for XP PRO plus I had copies of them already. NOW, here is my issue, I've installed XP PRO on a separate partition. I was able to use a Dell XP PRO Disc with SP2 for install. I don't see in my device manager the place to disable the ACPI there. I'm wondering if it has to do with the DEll Disc. I did do a standard PC install on this. Right now in ProTools 7 it only shows one processor when it should say two. Just wondering what I'm doing wrong. If anybody can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it as I know this laptop will work. Thanks. Oh yeah, I have a MBox hooked up to it. Haven't tried my 002Rack yet. Thanks for the help in advance.

Bump for the day crowd

[chadly]

Well I decided to make the leap and get the E1705. I do agree it's one hella of a machine. I decided to get the 2GHz Duo Core Processor with the free 1GB mem, 80GB 7200 RPM HD. Got Media Center cuz I didn't want to pay the xtra $150 for XP PRO plus I had copies of them already. NOW, here is my issue, I've installed XP PRO on a separate partition. I was able to use a Dell XP PRO Disc with SP2 for install. I don't see in my device manager the place to disable the ACPI there. I'm wondering if it has to do with the DEll Disc. I did do a standard PC install on this. Right now in ProTools 7 it only shows one processor when it should say two. Just wondering what I'm doing wrong. If anybody can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it as I know this laptop will work. Thanks. Oh yeah, I have a MBox hooked up to it. Haven't tried my 002Rack yet. Thanks for the help in advance.

I believe you might need to use some web drivers to get the ACPI to show up correctly. I don't believe the Dell stuff for laptops will show up right unless it's an XP Pro disc made especially for the E1705. I had to download all of my drivers seperately and sneakernet them over on CDR from my (now old) main machine. You shouldn't have any problems after that. Once it's up and running with everything recognized, you can go into the device manager and disable things.

I also went into BIOS and changed the power management modes: not very power efficient for my "fun" partition but certainly doesn't hurt my XP Pro "Work" partition.

Hopefully this helps:

[image]http://www.cheshireomnimedia.com/images/DeviceManagerE1705.JPG[/image]