Has anyone had experience using the following Dell laptops with Premiere/Cineform? I would be using an external drive for editing and would like to be able to use the overlay on another monitor when needed. Both laptops come with Windows XP Pro.

Dell Latitude D830 with Nvidia Quardro NVS 140M (256 discrete MB)

Dell Precision M6300 with Nvidia Quardro FX 1600M (256 discrete MB)

Tim, we have a couple M90's at CineForm - the predecessor to the M6300. The M90 is a great machine, and I have no doubt that the M6300 will also be a great machine. We've had good luck with Dell laptops in general. I think Silicon Imaging has qualified the M6300 for RT capture using the SI-Mini camera. I would get either the T7800 or X7900 CPU.

For the D830, if you get the T7800 CPU I'm sure it'll work great. But normally we prefer the 17" screen on the M6300 versus the 15.4" screen of the D830. But that is a call for you to make based on your intentions with the laptop. While on this topic, all our LCD panels on the M90s are 17" 1920x1200 on the - it's a big help when trying to edit on a laptop.

Get 2GB memory, and also Win XP.

Thanks David. I was looking at going with the 17" 1440x900 route because I was worried a 1920x1200 screen would make everything too small and cause eye strain after a day of working. Have you guys had any problems with that?

Not me, I like the 1920x1200 screen.

No eye strain whatsoever. Quite the opposite - it provides enough detail that it makes the screen size very workable. I'll never go back to a lower res 17" laptop monitor.

Awesome. Thanks.