PC Music Laptop Quest

[The Pro]

Hi Craig: quick question - are you using a laptop for music these days? If so, what kind, some quick specs please. Any thoughts on the topic?

 

I'm on a PC music laptop quest and I'm wondering what others are using or would recommend. Thanks!

[Dylan Walters]

Any laptop with a decent processor (Centrino is preffered) with the following should do the trick:

 

1GB of RAM

5400 or 7200 RPM internal HD

CDR-W/DVD Combo or DVD-R Drive

An external Firewire HD for audio

Dedicated Graphics Controller

Preferrably a Texas Instruments Firewire controller

XP Pro

3 year warranty

 

As I've said on other threads here I'd check out the HP Business Notebooks. They have several models that meet this criteria that are very reliable. HP has good support as well.

[Gus Lozada]

Hey Dylan!

 

Do you know an actual reason about WHY Centrino?

I am againt anything not being P4 or Athlon on a Laptop PC.

[Dylan Walters]

Hey Gus! The Centrino is an actual P4, but optimized for battery life and better performance than the regular P4 Mobile. Also, Centrino systems have wifi built-in to the motherboard.

[Gus Lozada]

 

Originally posted by Dylan Walters Hey Gus! The Centrino is an actual P4, but optimized for battery life and better performance than the regular P4 Mobile. Also, Centrino systems have wifi built-in to the motherboard.

 

 

Is it exactly a P4? Not a cut-down like a Celeron?

[Dylan Walters]

Yes, it's an actual P4 Mobile, not a Celeron. Actually, I didn't quite explain it correctly the first time. Intel has two flavors of P4 Mobiles: 1 with 512k of cache and a 400MHz FSB and the other with 1 or 2MB Cache and a 533MHz FSB. The Centrino's have the better specs, verses the systems advertised as P4's only.

[Dylan Walters]

To confuse matters more, Intel also has desktop P4's in some laptops. These babies run at full speed 100% of time and also support HyperThreading. These are the fastest CPU's from Intel for mobile use, but they aren't designed for optimal battery life as you can probably imagine. Also, they usually have huge power supplies and larger form factor cases to accomodate for the extra heat and power.

[Lee Knight]

Have you guys seen this...

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug05/articles/pcnotes.htm

[Dylan Walters]

Sweet article, Lee. I have seen other articles about the desktop boards supporting the mobile CPU's including a SFF system that was reviewed on tomshardware. I have to admit that it's a really cool concept (no pun intended), however, I think that I'd still prefer a desktop CPU for a desktop board with a quiet fan like a Zalman. Hell, the stock AMD fans for AMD64 systems are damn near whisper quiet alone.

[cyanhue]

 

Originally posted by Gus Lozada Hey Dylan! Do you know an actual reason about WHY Centrino? I am againt anything not being P4 or Athlon on a Laptop PC.

 

 

I really have to step in ad correct some misconceptions here:

1. the centrino processor is NOT a pentioum 4 , it is not even a similar design to the pentium 4. in fact it is far more similar to the pentium 3 with some newer technilogy and optimizations. this doesn't make it a worse processor just one optimized for low power. in fact it gets a lot more performance per watt that a pentioum 4 , so a 1.6 Ghz centrino is actualy significantly faster then a 1.6ghz pentuioum 4.

2. to make thing worse centrino is not the processor at all it is a combination of three components the chipset processor and wireless board, the processor itself is known as a pentium-m (not to be confused with apentium 4-m which is just a lower poer version of the pentium 4).

 

to break it down for you:

pentium 4 (normal or mobile) -> faster , consumes a lot more power , and therefore tends to have a significantly shorter battery life.

 

centrino/pentium-m -> optimized for low power and so gets great battery life, but usually not as powerfull as a pentium4. note that there are at least two different versionjs of this processor (the newer one known as dothan) , but I wont go into this here.

 

celeron -> basically a crippled version of the pentium-4 which is cheaper but gets worse performance. mostly found in cheaper laptops.

 

AMD Turion -> a lower power version of the AMD athlon processor line designed for laptops, supposed to compete with centrino, but I think it does better in terms of power but significantly worse in terms of battery life.

 

AMD Athlon 64 mobile -> a lower power version of the Athlon 64 processor , great power , not so great battery life . mostly comparable to the pentium 4 .

[Dylan Walters]

Thanks for clearing things up, cyanhue. I was under the impression that the Centrino was a type of P4, but after for some more research it appears that the M is quite a bit different. Thanks!

[Gus Lozada]

Wow

 

Excellent info, amigos. I reallty appreciate it.

Thanks!

[blue2blue]

 

Originally posted by Dylan Walters Hey Gus! The Centrino is an actual P4, but optimized for battery life and better performance than the regular P4 Mobile. Also, Centrino systems have wifi built-in to the motherboard.

 

 

Don't be afraid of the Centrino, or, more properly the Pentium M. ("Centrino" was a marketing name Intel came up with to designate a combination of a PM, a dedicated Wi-Fi chip, and some other features.)

 

It is the chip family that will be the base for the next generation of premium Intel chips.

 

And, actually it's not based on the P4. It's 'based' on key technologies from the P3 -- but it's highly evolved. The P4 and the AMD chips are reputed (by the bit-twister set) to be more or less near the end of their evolutionary chains. There's just not much more room, they say, for speed improvements with their fundamental designs.

 

 

The Pentium M is the second most efficient chip in use today, as measured by the SETI-at-home aggregated benchmarks.

 

The 64 bit version, the Yonah, wil reportedly be at the heart of the next generation of Macintoshs and Intel-powered Windows machines.

 

 

There's a 1.4 gHz PM in my Dell 8600 (along with a 7200 RPM drive, undoubtedly the Hitachi TravelStar, at the time the only 2.5 in 7200 rpm drive; I also added an extra GB of RAM [pulling one 256 MB chip for a total of 1.25 GB]... but do keep in mind that extra RAM means extra heat. Something a lot of us don't necessarily think about. Still, if you need the RAM, and I did for BFD, you need the RAM.)

[The Pro]

Yeah, good info - thanks for sharing.

 

I currently have a Novation X-Station 49 and it's USB audio interface suffers from playback problems when used with my studio desktop. Novation say this is because there are audio problems with Intel's 915G chipset in the Pentium 4's. I have a workaround (my Delta 1010LT interface works fine in my desktop) so I'm not so concerned about using the X-Station as a USB audio interface with the desktop, but I want to use the X-Station via USB with a future laptop so I'm considering an AMD 64-bit Turion laptop. Also the future 64-bit possibilities are appealing.

 

One that currently stands out is the Acer Ferrari 4000.

 

Specs:

AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-37

(2.0 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)

15.4