What is a good netbook/notebook for Portable Recording Studio?

[snooxorz]

Hi! You guys are all so great here, thanks! I have and use:

 

Line 6 POD Studio UX2

Fender & Gibson guitars

Shure SM58

M-Audio Axiom 25

Reaper

Sony Soundforge

Propellerhead Reason

Ableton (learn it eventually)

 

Those little netbooks are so awesome and cheap! They're so small, would be perfect for a portable recording studio, just lay down tracks with different people on the move! But they have these little "atom" processors or whatever. Does anyone know for sure if even the top atoms can NOT deal with the processing power I need for the above list? Not all the software would be running at the same time.

 

Or do I need to just get a notebook? Anyone have a great suggestion on one that is a great deal, like a steal of a bargain for the minimum I would need for my portable recording studio? Any and all suggestions highly appreciated!

[Phil O'Keefe]

Good. Fast. Cheap.

 

 

Pick any two.

 

 

 

Seriously, before even thinking about using a Atom based netbook with any of those programs, I'd head over to each of their websites and check out their minimum system requirements / specs. If the Atom isn't mentioned at all, I'd drop them an email asking if it will work / is supported or not. Just because it's not officially supported doesn't automatically mean it won't work, but you pay your money and place your bets at that point, and risk having purchased something that you can't easily return and that doesn't do what you need it to do.

 

I'm using a 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo white MacBook with 4GB of RAM. It's not the fastest, nor is it the smallest, and it's certainly not the cheapest, but it struck just the right balance of web security (I use this for the forums a lot), cost, mobility, screen visibility and performance. It was a "refurb", which allowed me to get it at a somewhat reduced rate off their normal pricing, and it looked brand new when it arrived here. Full warranty on it too - not that I've needed it (knock on wood) - it's been rock solid.

 

I'm not really "up" on what the latest / best deals are on PC laptops, but we have a lot of PC users here, so I'm sure you'll get some suggestions fairly soon... but I'd advise caution and full research before getting a netbook for use with those programs.

[snooxorz]

Thanks for the info.

 

Anymore suggestions?

[CME]

FWIW if you're after size I think lenovo makes some pretty potent little machines.

[dizzykitty]

I'd be careful about recording on a netbook with an atom processor. Netbooks are good for surfing the web and maybe working on some word processing; but they weren't designed for anything much heavier than that.