Everyone needs one of these.

[daklander]

 

Clic the pic.

 

Take that puppy and a flat screen on location for recording.

[Lee Knight]

That's cool. Kind of like an Atari but smaller, faster, etc.

[where02190]

$500, no optical drive, no monitor. Add those in, plus the physical space they take up, and a laptop is way smaller and the same or cheaper.

[Gus Lozada]

Hi Dak!

 

Even when I loved it when I first saw it, it does not have FireWire ports. For portable recording you are limited to USB 2.0 interfaces -and there are not yet a lot of them. maybe they are coming soon!- or current USB 1.1 such like MBox / MBox2. I'm more into FireWire than USB's and that might be my concern.

 

Hey Where, the difference on this one and a laptop is that it has a "real" Pentium 4 and MoBo, like any desktop and the hard disks are standar Ultra-ATA disks. It might perform faster than a similar Laptop and result costing less than half the price of a similar specs Laptop. Yes, the monitor can add up a lot more money but then you can have the size and expand when needed.

 

However... when adding:

 

* Pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHz

* 80 GB HD

* 1 GB RAM DDR @ 400 MHz

* CDRW-DVD combo

* Win XP PRO

* Modem

 

- NO monitor included in the price.

 

the total is... $1,076.25 ... not exactly a great deal, unless you really love the size of the thing.

 

A similar performance MAC Mini might cost a lot less.

[object.session]

i got $806 for a 1.42 ghz mac mini with 1 gig ram, 80 gig hard drive, hired keyboard and mouse, and modem.

 

just in case anyone was wondering . .

[Gus Lozada]

Originally posted by object.session i got $806 for a 1.42 ghz mac mini with 1 gig ram, 80 gig hard drive, hired keyboard and mouse, and modem. just in case anyone was wondering . .

 

Thanks!

[daklander]

 

Originally posted by where02190 $500, no optical drive, no monitor. Add those in, plus the physical space they take up, and a laptop is way smaller and the same or cheaper.

 

 

There is an optical drive but if used it precludes using a pci card.

 

Certainly there are places a laptop would work better but not as an on stage tool, particularly for a solo performer. Place the flat screen monitor in box made to look like an audio monitor with the keyboard on a stand in close proximity and it's right there. You can't do that with a laptop. On top of that many of todays laptops, particularly with the 17" monitors, are larger in width and depth. The 15.4 widescreens are darned near as wide and considerably deeper.

Also, the current prices of flat screen moniors just ain't all that bad in the 17" size.

 

This will run any Ultra ATA hard drive so you're running at 7200rpm vs 5400rpm, a huge difference for on the fly audio recording.

 

It's not a perfect solution but neither is a laptop.

[daklander]

 

Originally posted by Gus Lozada Hi Dak! Even when I loved it when I first saw it, it does not have FireWire ports. For portable recording you are limited to USB 2.0 interfaces -and there are not yet a lot of them. maybe they are coming soon!- or current USB 1.1 such like MBox / MBox2. I'm more into FireWire than USB's and that might be my concern.

 

 

Hola Gus,

Feliz Navidad, Amigo.

 

It is pricy, no doubt but IMO it would make a great stage tool as I mentioned in my reply above.

As to the FireWire, you could run a pci card for FireWire but then optical would be out. A compromise to be sure.