laptop for m-powered 8 and fast track ultra

[OsvaldoDavis]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a laptop to be recording a good amount of tracks at once with pro tools m-powered 8 and the fast track ultra.
The processor, speed, ram etc would really help. I will probably be recording up to around 16 tracks at a time.
unfortunately due to lack of money, the laptop will have to be used for general use aswell, work, internet access etc.
Ideally i would like windows 7, which i hear is compatible with pro tools m-powered 8, but how hard is that to sort out?
Thanks

[Jonathho]

I originally tried the Ultra and could not get good track count reliability with USB 2.0 so switched to Profire 610 with no problems so in my experience I strongly prefer firewire. (also using firewire pc card rather than built-in which is sometime used for transferring files to ext firewire drive for further editing/archiving on desktop) I have good results with a Latitude e6400 that is running with two internal hard drives - a 250GB 7200rpm system drive, and via a caddy replacing the DVD drive, my record drive is a 320GB 7200rpm drive. Very neat and easy to transport since both are internal. Several Lenovo, HP, and Dell models support drive caddy's in place of the DVD drive but check specs to make sure can get full advantage of 7200rpm performance. If get Dell best to reinstall OS to get rid of some of their unneeded drivers/utilities (I'm on Vista Business) and if I'm recording more than 1 or 2 tracks I boot into the ROM and disable all wireless. Most I've recorded is 6 tracks at once (4 audio + digital), have mixes w/ up to 16 audio tracks, no MIDI, normal count of FX such as eq, verb, compression. Hope that helps...

[noiseless64]

Osvaldo,
recording 16 tracks at a time ? Is that possible with the Fast Track Ultra? It has eight inputs for mics (or 2 for line + 6 mics). Or is it possible to add MIDI/Optical inputs without losing microphone inputs?
About the laptop: Any new laptop available in stores now with a Core2Duo of more then 1.5 Ghz, and 3 or 4 GB RAM wil do fine. You can even use them for all purposes, as long as you shut down these applications when you're working with PT. I you have the money, go for a QUAD processor. Two separate Hard Drives is preferable, but on a laptop a lttle bit of an operational problem. My advice: Don't go for that option. If you want to become a pro in PT recording/engineering, then don't buy a laptop....
HD capacity is fine nowadays in the new notebooks, speed is more important, the faster the better (take 7200 rpm). But don't invest in terrabytes. Us an external harddrive for storage of your video's, pictures, documents and all your other "general use" stuff, external harddrives are very cheap nowadays.