Purchasing a Laptop

T

thesoloist1914

Paradom Beats
Hey all, Paradom again with another question. So in another thread I posted wondering about equipment to begin building my home studio. Everyone who replied gave very good suggestions in which I am going to take into consideration but I soon realized that I need a new computer. To be more specific I need a laptop. I say a laptop mainly because of the portability but of course I'm also a student in college so I need to be able to take my work with me. I was wondering if anyone could point out a good laptop with some good specs that I can purchase. Honestly I'm trying not to spend more than $1000 but if I have to go a tad over I will, but only if necessary, and I'm not planning on buying a Mac anytime soon. (Nothing against it but its too expensive for my blood.) Since I'll primarily be using this for school work and beat making (I'm not going to get into recording just yet but I do have plans to hopefully after I graduate.) I use FL Studio 10 as my current DAW and I am currently looking for another for composition which I heard Reason was pretty good. But besides software I need to know which laptop will provide me with enough power and space to get what I have to do done. Thank you in advanced.
 
so for software that will allow you to achieve the musicianship requirements for composition and scoring you need something other the fl or reason (PS I use reason, so know the limitations).

given that you do not need to have topnotch software for these tasks get something like canoris or musescore to handle that side of things and get reason 7 with maybe balance as an interface

as for the lt itself - something with 8gb of ram and and at least 2 1tb drives would be good - brand is irrelevant as they are all made in much the same factories with the same basic design (if they use intel or amd chipsets, the boards have to be designed to accommodate those chipsets so design tends to be uniform)
 
Now I've been searching through different computers with different harddrives and I cannot seem to find one that runs at 7200 rpm. The majority of hardrives run at 5400 rpm is that okay? Or should I keep looking. I've done some research and found that finding a hardrive with that speed is crucial because it helps in data processing. And finding a laptop with two 1Tb harddrives thats gotta be hard and expensive. Any ideas on where to look?
 
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keep it to one hdd if you have to

as for the rpm's this is more to do with the processing requirements for streaming audio direct to disk when recording - this is as much to do with buffer size and latency as anything else

I prefer not to recommend brands as there are too many other variables that come into play
 
You really don't need 2tb's of hard drive space, especially if you're not recording. go for 750gb-1tb, unless you have tons of media or soundbanks. I have a pretty big Flac music library and I still have about 100gb's free. 8gb's of ram is great, you don't need anymore unless you're doing lots of video editing and/or orchestration with big sound libraries. 6gb's would be fine for your purposes.

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Often laptops come up with much better specs than I mentioned for about $700. quad core i7's with 1tb harddrive, discrete graphics cards and good amounts of ram.

Make sure you pick a screen size and resolution you like. I didn't know this at the time but the standard 1366x768 resolution leaves a lot to be desired. I can't see all of Harmor in FL Studio at that resolution, so I highly recommend a higher res screen.

Just make sure to read reviews because sometimes windows laptops have design flaws that make them overheat and what not. Good luck! I've had good luck with the HP Envy series (though I've heard that the HP Pavilions aren't so great).
 
I'm in Canada and this is $498 new in stores. Look for something like this. Very fast computer. It has a quad core processor 2.1GHz, that's like having four 2.1GHz processors in there. And 8GB of RAM is awesome. 750GB hard drive is plenty of space (I have one on mine). If you end up needing more, you can always upgrade hard drives or buy an external hard drive for pretty cheap.

HP Pavillion

Screen Size 15.6 in
Native Screen Resolution 1366 x 768
LED Backlit Display Yes
Touchscreen Display No
3D Capable Display No
Processor Type AMD Elite Quad-Core A10-5745M
Processor Cores 4
Processor Speed 2.1 GHz
Processor Cache 4 MB L2
Hard Drive Capacity 750 GB
Hard Drive Speed (Revolutions Per Minute) 5400 rpm
RAM Size 8 GB
RAM Type DDR3L SDRAM (2 DIMM)
RAM Slots 2
Optical Drive SuperMulti DVD Burner
Built-in Memory Card Reader Yes
Memory Card Reader - Compatible Memory Type SD
Graphics Chipset AMD Radeon HD 8610G
Video Memory Configuration Integrated
Dedicated Video Memory Size Not Applicable
Wireless Display (WiDi) Capable No
Speaker Wattage Information Not Available
Integrated Microphone Yes
Microphone Input Yes
Digital Audio Output Information Not Available
Webcam Yes
Keyboard Language Bilingual
Numeric Keypad Yes
Backlit Keyboard No
Type of Pointing Device Touchpad
Number of Touchpad Buttons Information Not Available
Type of Modem Not Applicable
USB 2.0 Ports 1
USB 3.0 Ports 2
VGA Output Information Not Available
HDMI Output Yes
HDCP Compliant Yes
IEEE 1394 Input/Output No
eSATA Port No
ExpressCard/34 Input No
ExpressCard/54 Input No
IR Receiver No
Other Input or Output Ports None
Ethernet Port 10/100
Integrated Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
Integrated Bluetooth Yes
Approximate Battery Life Information Not Available
Battery Type Lithium-Ion
Battery - Number of Cells 4
Energy Star Qualified Yes
Pre-loaded Operating System Windows 8
Operating System Language Bilingual
Loaded Software Information Not Available
Colour Black
Laptop Thickness (closed) 2.26 cm
Laptop Depth 25.81 cm
Laptop Width 38.56 cm
Laptop Weight (including battery) 2.29 kg
Warranty Labour 1 Year(s)
Warranty Parts 1 Year(s)
 
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