What new laptop/computer will work with Pro Tools 8? ha

[sma5jp]

Hi guys

I've been working with Pro Tools 8 LE for a few years and love it but the Windows laptop I'm using is just not up to it, 2gb RAM and crap CPU mean that enough is enough and I have to invest in something powerful.

My budget is about £600 or $800 or there abouts. It seems laptops with i5 processors and 8Gb RAM are easily available for about £400 nowadays, which is great. However I'm concerned about Pro Tools 8 running on them, specifically on Windows 8. Would anyone recommend getting Windows 8 or 7?

Also I'm not sure about the whole 32 bit / 64 bit systems. What I understand is that a machine running with 8Gb memory will be 64 bit and won't work with PT8 as that's in 32 bit? I'll level with you. I don't really understand this!

I'm not against getting a mac or desktop, however I'm concerned with the costs of getting a new mac and then having to get a newer version of Pro Tools with it.

Basically, if you had a copy of Pro Tools 8 LE for windows, and a budget of £600 / £700 for a machine to use it on, what would you do? What particular things would you be looking out for?

Thanks, Jamie

[albee1952]

Personally, I would shop for a used MacBook Pro with an i7 cpu. Getting a Windows laptop that WILL work is a crapshoot at best, and most budget machines don't have a separate graphics processor(which seems to really help for PT on Windows). Windows 8 would require a newer version of PT, and with the Mac, avoid Mavericks, You still need to research and find out which versions of PT will work with the various OS options out there.