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Laptop advice please


indigo_dave

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I'm interested in buying a laptop and getting the upcoming Presonus Firestudio. I found a laptop that sells for under $700.

It's an HP Pavillion (DV6119US) with:

AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50

1024MB DDDR2 memory

80 GB Hard drive

It has 1 Firewire, one S-video and 3 USB Ports

A 15.4" WXGA display screen

 

Should this be adequate for recording generally 8 tracks or less. Since laptops aren't easily upgradable or expandable,

I'd like to make the right purchase. Are there certain features I should look for besides the ones I listed ?

 

Thanks for any info,

David

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I doubt you're going to want to spring for a whole new copy of XP Pro -- and reinstalling the OS from any included system disks will likely just reinsall all the junkware (AOL offers, Trial Demos of software, unwanted media players like the intrusive RealPlayer, etc) that can REALLY burden a system, which is what you're trying to get rid of.

 

So, failing a clean copy of an off the shelf version of XP or XP Pro (they're virtually interchangeable as far as recording goes, XP Pro has an IIS server and other advanced enterprise networking features most folks don't need), you'll want to go through your boot profile and remove all the junkware.

 

Typically, you can do most of that from Install/Uninstall Programs for programs you want to remove completely.

 

To keep programs from automatically loading and running in the background you can use the Start Up page in MsConfig... [start Menu/Run/... type in MSconfig...] although you'll probably also find that a number of softwares have put services in your service profile, as well.

 

There's an option on the MSconfig Services page to "hide Microsoft services" and that will allow you to look to see what 3rd party services may be draining your system. Things like printers and network adapters, WiFi you'll want to keep, in many cases. But a lot of other stuff can go, such as media player "helpers" and autoloaders. Err on the side of caution, but you have a number of recovery options, too.

 

And you can follow the tweaking instructions you'll find at www.MusicXP.net to make some easy optimizations that may well increase the apparent performance/responsiveness of you machine; a good resource. Also, www.TweakXP.com is good, too. A little more intensive.

 

If you end up with a machine that has Windows Media Center Edition, you'll want to search this BB for a couple threads on optimizing a WMCE machine for audio work. [Don't freak out when you see that a bunch of companies do not support WMCE. Underneath the MCE components, WMCE is nearly identical to XP Pro (but again, no IIS server). But you will probably end up turning off the Media Center components. I've been using such an optimized WMCE system for audio and it is essentially every bit as lean and mean as my optimized version of regular XP.]

 

But, again, if you DO use the pre-installed OS on your new machine, you will absolutely want to optimize it by removing all the junkware from your boot profile.

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Originally posted by Gus Lozada

I would actuelly format the machine and install a fresh Win XP PRO fully updated prior to anything else.

But this adds $200 to the cost of the $700 laptop. He's probably not thinking along those lines.

 

It ain't like the days when we could "borrow" a copy of DOS from work, take it home on a 360K floppy disk, and load it on to all of our computers at home.

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Thanks, it sounds a little more convoluted than I expected.

I couldn't find the chiset listed on HP's site when I searched on the model#.

 

I will print out your advice and save it.

 

This laptop comes with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Is this workable ?

 

David

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Originally posted by Rabid

Also try to find what chips are on the motherboard and make sure that the sound card you plan to use does not have issues with that chip set.

 

 

And make sure your laptop does NOT have ATI Radeon products. Was not able to use the firestudio at all on my HP pavilion zv6000 1gigDDR athlon 64 and the Radeon xpress 200M.

The presonus tech websit has already identifed an incompatability with ATI Radeon 9000 series and the firestudio.

Presonus tech support recommends nVidia chipsts.

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