Recommend your Laptop

[Dawn Brennan]

I am going to be purchasing a laptop in the near future to allow myself to become mobile and potentially to try my hand at SDE's. I use a Dell PC currently and edit with Vegas and I am looking for something quite powerful with a decent amount of memory... I will be using external HD's as well. Does anyone recommend anything specific that I should be looking for? Thanks!

[Peter Jefferson]

I use a toshiba
ive got a core 2 duo @ 2.6 which runs @ about 5ghz or so when compared to a single core HT PC.. faster than my desktop in fact... this is perfectly fine, and you will find the CPU can handle uncompressed and realtime dv conversions much faster.
Also graphics, images and generated media will render faster than a single core or dual core system

ie got 1gb ram, but more importantly, im runing an nvidia go7300 256mb 128bit gfx card.. this was teh main reason i bought this lappy, as most lappys have crap GFX cards..
For vegas u might wonder why i need it (the gfx card).. well i run MB2.. and with this card, i get faster than realtime renders and i can do all the colour processing on the fly without the slow rendering and without having to use any other filters.
I also use bluff titler for my 3d text titles and Particle Illusion3, so all these other apps will also use the gfx card to their advantage.. as will PremPro2..
Its also runs Doom3 at stupid high res at abotu 80fps.. lol gret for winding down after a hard day filming..

In addition when playing the output, i actually render to Cineform AVI @ 720p or 1080i and run the video file straight out of media player 10.. this way i have HD res straight out of the lappy into the projector, and with the GFX card supporting these HD formats and codecs, it doesnt skip a beat or drop frames.
Persoanally, id prefer a full duplex soundcard, but its not esentail for what i use this lappy for..

for external sorage i use a WD 120gb 5400rpm drive which runs off USB bus power.. have to be VERY careful with these as if the USB bus is straining, u may notice some intermitant slowdown.. this is usually if ur running on battery power or if u have more than 1 drive connected
The USB2 interface can handle the bandwidth, but it has issues with the power stability, and this is on every laptop/desktop... not just toshiba

by the way, get a mouse.. it will make things much easier as ur already accustomed to it

[Jason Magbanua]

Heartily recommend the Dell XPS 1210 if you're looking for a small machine). It's perhaps the best of it's class. Core2, 7400Nvidia card. I've got my ram maxed at 2gigs.

Patrick.
Wow - 2.6, sweeeet! What's quirky about Toshiba's though is the windows key usualy located at the upper right.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Originally Posted by Dawn Brennan

I am going to be purchasing a laptop in the near future to allow myself to become mobile and potentially to try my hand at SDE's. I use a Dell PC currently and edit with Vegas...

Hi Dawn,

We have used a couple of Toshibas for about 3 years for our SDEs. They have worked great. We have loaded the footage on the system drive with no problems.

I noticed that several of the Toshiba's are using 4200 RPM drives, and that concerned me. I had heard a lot of good things about Dell laptops, so after further research, that is what we bought.

Dell Inspiron 9400. Core 2 Duo 2.0, 667 FSB, 2 gb ram, 100 gb 7200 RPM hard drive with a 17 inch screen. We also bought an extra 80 whr battery. It came in around $1700 with a nearly $400 discount coupon.

We have done one SDE with it and it performs great for SD. We bought it with hopes to be able to edit HD. As of today, we have not edited a project in HD, but I have loaded in a little HD and while there was not as much real time, it was able to load the footage and give me real time if I did not add too many filters to it.

[George Ellis]

I edit SD on my HP Pavillion. Not a desktop, but it was also a $1k laptop. The above guidelines are great. The one sticking point on our Pavillion was the 4200rpm drive. It will not log without dropping frames, but it will capture (logging in Avid Liquid is different than just a straight capture as a single AVI).

BTW, I was snickering at the thread title and the location... "Recommend your laptop" in the Wedding and Event section. That could cause trouble ;)

[Timothy Harry]

I get to be the mac fanboy!

MBP Core2 2.33
2 GB RAM
FC Studio

I love it!

[Trond Saetre]

I use the Dell XPS M1710 laptop with a 100GB 7200rpm hdd.
I also have a 500GB 7200rpm western external hdd connected via usb2.
CPU: Core 2 2,33GHz
Ram: 2GB
GFX: Geforce go 7900GTX

It's fast and I can highly recommend this laptop, but it is expencive.

[Dawn Brennan]

Originally Posted by Trond Saetre

I use the Dell XPS M1710 laptop with a 100GB 7200rpm hdd.
I also have a 500GB 7200rpm western external hdd connected via usb2.
CPU: Core 2 2,33GHz
Ram: 2GB
GFX: Geforce go 7900GTX

Thanks to everyone for all your help. This is kind of along the lines of what I was looking at, but I appreciate the advice incase I decide to shop around to other brands. Thanks again!

[Kevin Shaw]

When I bought my current laptop I shopped several major manufacturers and ended up getting a Dell Latitude D820 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 processor, 15.4 widescreen monitor, 2GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive and 256 MB video card. It also has both PCMCIA and ExpressCard expansion slots plus gigabit ethernet, and will run for several hours continuously with the optional "media bay" battery. About the only things it doesn't have are dedicated DVD playback controls you'll find on some consumer-oriented laptops, plus a way to see the keyboard in the dark (so I added a USB-powered light).

Using Edius I can edit several layers of DV in real time or two layers of HDV 1080i material, and rendering out to SD MPEG2 is reasonably quick. Since getting this laptop I seldom use my desktop computers any more except to burn and print DVDs, and that partly just to have some use for them.

[Timothy Harry]

OK this is going to sound strange because of my previous pro Mac post, but heres what I do for my day job.

I work as a director of Information Technology for a manufacturing company. I manage 45 workstations and 7 servers. Here lately I was charged with the task of finding a more reliable laptop than what we were currently using The company had bought 11 Sony Vaios 2 years ago, and all but 3 are now dead, I had one smoke this morning as a matter of fact, big pop, lots of smoke. It really stunk up the office. Long story short I got a great Monday stress reliever throwing the piece of crap across the parking lot!

Ok back on track again, ADD is great for creativity, but not so great for staying on track. In my research of laptops, I called many of my friends from other companies who have laptops, and after talking with them about their experiences this is what I came up with.

Not one of the companies would ever touch a Sony VAIO, HP's were ok, Dells were fast, but were not very rugged. Toshiba's were very well liked by 3 of the companies. And the main answer was the Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad. This is what we standardized on, and here is why. The Thinkpads had a shock isolated hard drive, the frame was magnesium alloy, and the laptop did not have 50 billion pieces of crapware installed.

If you are looking for an ultra tough PC you may want to check out a Panasonic Toughbook, but in my opinion for a video editor this is a lot of overkill and unnecessary, but if you want a computer that will withstand an EMP, that would be a great option :) (for 5 grand it should be able to withstand anything in my opinion)

Like I said previously, I love the mac. I use a MacBook Pro and run bootcamp for when I absolutely have to go into windows. It works very well for me.

[Jason Magbanua]

[QUOTE=Peter Jefferson;681353]I use a toshiba
ive got a core 2 duo @ 2.6 which runs @ about 5ghz or so when compared to a single core HT PC./QUOTE]

Peter. Did I read this right - 2.6 Core2? If so could you post a link. Thanks

[Peter Jefferson]

Sorry Jase, that was a typo... it should read 2.0... ive got C2Duo 2.6 on my desktop

[John Moon]

I agree with Tim....I'm a MBP user...love my Mac's...have not done a SDE..YET.

[Jason Magbanua]

NO worries. I guess I'm gonna have to wait it out until faster processors are available. thanks