Will this notebook handle vegas 6/dvd editing software? I have a chance to buy it from a friend. I'm concened about the size/speed of the hard drive as well as the RAM. Any thoughts? Will I be able to replace the hard drive and the ram easily, if I need to?

Sony Vaio VGN-N130

15.4"-diagonal widescreen WXGA (1280 x 800) XBrite-Eco LCD screen
Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology
Intel Core Duo processor T2050 operating at 1.6GHz
2MB L2 cache
533MHz frontside bus
1.0GB of PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM
80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
DVD±RW drive with Double Layer DVD±R support
Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN
10/100Base-TX Ethernet port
56K V.92 modem
2 USB 2.0 ports
1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) port
1 ExpressCard/34 slot
Memory card reader: supports Memory Stick and Secure Digital formats, as well as Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Pro Duo media with MagicGate functionality
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 128MB shared video memory (dynamically allocated)
Integrated speaker with microphone jack and headphone jack
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2 comes installed.

Rick

Vegas will run on just about anything, so sure, no sweat. You'll be fine.

The only thing which might be an issue -- and only might -- is that a 5400 RPM HDD might not be ideal for capturing. But for editing, no problem.

How difficult/expensive is it to replace the hard drive with a 7200 rpm?

Rick,

The best option would be to buy an external hard drive. Whether on a laptop or a desktop you don't want to capture your material to the system drive. You can pick up a large external drive with a usb 2.0 interface at your local computer store. A 250gig, 7200 rpm drive is less than $130. It's money well spent because it saves your system drive and allows the system to edit at the highest speed.

Ben

I have a similar notebook setup (mines HP) with a couple of external hard drives and run Vegas 7 with no problems. Go for it! In fact, I can't believe how well the software works/runs on this computer. Very happy.

ive got somethin similar to this and i run V6 and V7 (plugins...)

works a treat, but mines not a centrino

as for the drive, i havent had issues capturing.. and i havent had issues playing baclk HD material, in fact i regularly use the lappy as a directl playback device for HD content across projectors, so yeah.. cant fault it..

oh, one other hting.. my lappy is running an nvidia go7300 256mb gx card with HW decoding of video formats.. i dunno how much CPU grunt would be needed to do the equivalent. Also with this gfx card, i run Magic bullet 2 and get full realtime frame playback and performance. I can also mess with after effects and any other opengl app (i use combustion and PI3) and use HW to acelerate my work.
Vegas however WONT use the gfx card to accelerate your work..

Thanks for all the useful info folks; I'm just beginning to learn how this Forum works and came across this thread using the Search function, so please forgive the turnip leaves this DV Newbie scatters about.

As I posted in the Panasonic DVX/DVC Assistant Forum (Please see post at: http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=88616),
I am planning to upgrade my Dell Inspiron 9300 in order to edit footage from my DVC60. I was considering an upgrade of the Internal Hard Drive, from the current 80 GB 5400rpm to a 100 GB 7200rpm. I was under the impression that one could only capture and edit with an Internal Drive. From what I've read here, this seems incorrect. I'd much rather upgrade to a 250 GB or even 500 GB HD.

So, my question is: Can I use an External HD (USB 2) to both capture and edit? I just conect the Firewire to my Laptop and....then what? How does this work?

Thanks for all the useful info folks; I'm just beginning to learn how this Forum works and came across this thread using the Search function, so please forgive the turnip leaves this DV Newbie scatters about.



I capture and edit with a 5400 rpm internal drive on my laptop. shouldn't be an issue. also consider that 5400 is deemed the sweet sport for laptops regarding performance and battery life.

I've actually captured HDV on a 4200RPM 2.5" laptop drive (in a laptop) before.

5400RPM is generally fine, unless you have a system problem.

You should be fine on an N-series with Vegas. I'd be very surprised if you had any serious problems with the performance for DV, HDV, or XDCAM.