Members explody pup Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 With my tax return staring at me every time I check my balance, the urge to buy a laptop and trash my current P.O.S. computer is getting difficult to resist. It would be nice to get a recording-capable computer. It would also be nice to have that cash there in the case of an emergency or (hopefully) the deposit on a new apartment if/when I get a better job somewhere NOT in small-town OK. Anyway, back on topic. It's been a while since I saw much about bug issues with Reaktor 4. I take this as a good sign. Have all (most?) of these issues been ironed out? How stable would you say this program is? Does it still employ a dongle (shudder) for copy-protection? I'm thinking about gettin a laptop and don't want to screw with dongles sticking out the side of it and potentially snapping off. Then again, I might just go with PD... but I imagine the learning curve is kind of steep with that. Do I use too many parentheses (yes)? Why is the sky blue? Do frogs go to heaven when they die? Frog heaven? Why can't I even take my own stupid threads seriously ( )? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mike51 Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 No dongle. Also, if you want to save some cash you can get a pretty solid PC for 800$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members explody pup Posted April 28, 2004 Author Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 Originally posted by Mike51 No dongle. Also, if you want to save some cash you can get a pretty solid PC for 800$. Good news about the dongle. Do you mean building my own PC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mike51 Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 yep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members explody pup Posted April 28, 2004 Author Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 Originally posted by Mike51 yep. I've been trying to weigh the pros and cons of that. It sure would be nice to record on my back porch or when I'm visiting the parents. I wish you could build your own laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mike51 Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 I guess it's all relative to how much cash you want to spend. With the laptop you'll get more portability, but less punch and a higher price. With the PC, you'll get more power for your money, save money, but of course lose any portabilty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members girevik Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 Apparently Squarepusher (who I just raved about earlier today) performs with Reaktor running on one of his laptops. If I hadn't just invested in a couple of hardware synths, I'd be looking at an eMachines laptop now - at least one model has a 1600MHz bus which I have not seen on other Windows laptops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members explody pup Posted April 28, 2004 Author Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 Yeah. The eMachines M6805 is actually the one I'm looking at. That + Reaktor 4 (or PD, not decided yet) + Tracktion is all I'd really need. Do you have any idea if you can add more ram the the eMachines laptops? Doesn't say anything about it on the spect sheet at the site. But when I factor in audio I/O and monitors, I get over my budget... which is telling me maybe I should hold off for a bit longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members girevik Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 I figured on taking my changes with the Best Buy sales staff as far as getting more info on eMachines specs, since Best Buy carries the brand. You should be able to add RAM to laptops in general, unless you're dealing with a poorly designed unit. This was before I decided to go hardware - for now anyway. I know a guy who has a Nord Modular AND TWO laptops, one running Audiomulch and the other running god-knows-what. He was using a little Emagic 2|6 USB audio interface with one of them, because he wanted 6-channel audio but didn't want to spend too much cash. I just found out Reaktor 4 includes a tool called Scenario, which has some Ableton Live-like functionality in that you can construct live sets and store parameter settings and such in scenes. -g Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J3RK Posted April 28, 2004 Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 That's funny that you arrived at that notebook. I have one sitting right in front of me here at work. Memory is expandable. It has a nice graphics chip, so if you need to take a break from writing music you can play games on it. The built-in audio is crap, so you'd want to get a USB or 1394 device. (Maybe one of the M-Audio Firewire devices or something.) The AMD64 proc that's in it, will be more than powerful enough to run Reaktor 4 nicely as well. I just pulled this thing out of the box last week, but it seems stable and quick. The first thing I did was wipe the stupid XP-Home install and put a clean copy of XP-Pro on it. I never use OEM installed OSes. (There are usually too many pointless apps installed, and too many things running in the background.) I personally would build a PC because of how much more power you can get out of it, but that's not a bad notebook from what I've seen of it so far. I'm in a hardware test lab, so everything gets fairly well hammered on (driver and stability-wise.) Oh, and it's got the nice wide screen, so it shouldn't be too hard on the eyes. If I run into any weirdness, I'll post it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members explody pup Posted April 28, 2004 Author Members Share Posted April 28, 2004 Originally posted by J3RK If I run into any weirdness, I'll post it. Cool. It's good to hear this is a decent laptop. I would just build a computer, but portability is an issue. I figured this, an Oxygen8, and a MobilePre would be what I need hardware-wise. Then I wouldn't have to worry about power outlets if there weren't any avaliable (I like the idea of a backpack studio ) Either way, it'll probably be at least a month or two before I'll pony up the cashola. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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