Another in the market for a laptop thread
So Im finllay coughing up some $$$ for a laptop thats in my price range and what I want as far as specs go. I want to run Traktor Pro on this and Ableton, Do you guys think this will suit my needs, Eventually I’ll upgrade the harddrive to a 1TB capacity. Or anyother suggestions out there I may have missed.
I think that you should save some money and buy a mac… I personally don’t like apples but I have to say that with both of my laptops (both have an i7, 8gb of ram, and 1tb) I’m having quite a lot of problems with drivers, compatibility problems, cpu overloads (using DAWs and traktor) etc…
If you really don’t like macs and go for that laptop you should upgrade the HDD with an SSD and put Windows 7 in it (i downgraded one of mines to w7 and now it’s doing its job) 
You must be reading my mind, I like the advice on downgrading the PC to Win 7 and upgrading the RAM and to a SSD. I may decide to save up for a Probook or something along the same lines thats the plan when I originally started down this slippery slope Im on. Im currently running Ableton and Traktor on my 8 core AMD/240SSD/16GB RAM desktop and have no problems of course.
I don’t have too much experience with prices in the US so I can’t really speak much about that, but I can tell from my own experience that it might be very well worth it to consider buying a used laptop. I just recently bought a MacBookPro "15 late 2011 for €700, which has done a great job for music production.
I’ve never had any problems with my Windows…
That said, I think it’s worth buying the 800-1100 laptops. The 500 dollar ones just don’t cut it. The performance is abysmal.
I’d also get an SSD in the laptop. Worth the investment.
Currently I’m running a specked out Mac, personally I love it, super fast and I find it super efficient but it was 5 times as much money…The specs on the ASUS look pretty good, but if your going to run both Ableton and Traktor your gonna need at least 8GB and even with that you’ll have little head room to run anything else, also keep in mind if your going out playing at a party, running a lower end laptop is imo a really bad idea cuz you never know when the thing might just crash and then your having to bust out some tunes from your phone.
Practically any PC laptop can perform excellently with audio with some minor tweaking.
There is also no reason whatsoever to not use Windows 8.1, it performs better in several ways than 7.
When people talk about Win8 like this its clear they read a lot more about Windows than they actually have professional experience installing and managing it.
Trust me, windows 8 doesn’t run good on pcs older than 1 year and a half like the ones I have. I was getting cpu overloads all the time on my asus with w8, now with w7 it runs absolutely better
I guess that a laptop built to have windows 8 inside runs better than a one that is not…but anyway I would still buy a mac for my musical needings (If I had the money, which i don’t
slight_smile:
You can talk yourself into a windows laptop all day… we have all done it…
Windows has brought me nothing but pain through the years.
If possible bite the bullet and go mac…they just work.
I know my mac is going to behave EXACTLY the same every time i press the power button. Windows machines don’t do that…they act slightly different every day, I don’t know what makes them do that. One day you turn it on and Traktor or ableton just decides to stop working, yet 2 days later it may just start working again for absolutely no reason.
I hate Apple, so my views are biased. but that being said Apple and Lenovo(thinkpad) are the only companies i know of that properly ground their boards. that means when you plug your laptop into a sound system you do not get that awful hum/buzzing sound.
I have been using lenovo for a while now, other then battery problems i have had with some of them they are pure beasts 
I got my replacement laptop as a refurb for just under 500. an i5 with 2 HDD’s and a touchscreen
Youre incorrect. Ive done the benchmarks and read plenty of others. I actually got a speed boost on my 6 year old Quad6600 when I installed Win81.
You had driver and configuration problems, or you were using a device that didnt have proper Win8 drivers, thats nothing to do with Windows.
I understand you have a preference, but a lot of people spread incorrect information on windows here.
This just sounds like user error. You were doing something very wrong if windows was acting different every day.
My workshop is currently full of both not properly working macs and PCs, theres nothing magic about Macs.
Windows 8 is stable as hell, and works just fine. My windows 8 server has been up for nearly 7 months at this point lols.
Yea…
My Windows boots up exactly the same every time I use it…
well, to be very fair…i have not used Windows 8. I’ve been on Macs for quite a while.
and I might have sounded like a prick a little…bwahaha…but I was just giving my personal opinion. Take with a grain of Salt.
I was completely against getting a Macbook for years, but once I started using a laptop for DJing I seemed to run into problem after problem with my laptops, I tried getting an expensive one, cheap one, different brands, no matter what they were being replaced rather regularly. A couple of years ago I got a Macbook Pro. Never had a single issue. Not one. (i’ve just jinxed myself)
Admittedly I was pretty rough with the laptops, but the Mac has handled it much much better. Like others have said it just works.
That said they both will do a job, so its each to their own, go with what you’re comfortable with, one thing I miss about Windows is I know how to fix them, inside and out.
I’d just make a point of avoiding the cheaper ‘plastic’ laptops. I struggled to make one last a year and the build quality is horrific.
I think Macs are excellent computers and there are lots of reasons to get one.
But this idea that they dont fail and just work is nonsense. When you deal with computers in large enough numbers they all fail.
I’m not saying they don’t fail. I’ve had friends replace logic boards, dead USB ports etc. All electronics can fail. I have just personally had less issues on a software and hardware front. Also a big fan of the ability of OSX to keep going without a fresh boot for weeks on end, maybe I just had bad luck withs laptops, but the idea of not shutting it down for a week would’ve had the machine grinding to a halt.
i think it kind of breaks down to a hardware thing…
the use of sub standard and mismatched hardware in PCs is a problem. Even coming from the factory.
They are trying to keep prices low to attract more users. hence the phrase…“You get an awesome product for a really good price…” hmmm no that doesn’t sound right… what is that phrase im looking for…hmmm
Oh yeah…“You get what you pay for”
I had an older HP laptop (2005-06ish) that the screen failed after 14 months. I opened it up to try and see what the issue was and to look into replacing the screen only to notice the heat from the laptop had melted the connections between the laptop and the screen. Further research told me this was actually a known fault in the laptop. This was a $3000 AUD laptop. Like I said I’ve had some bad luck with PCs.
That doesnt make any sense. Theres no such thing as “mismatched” hardware in a PC. This is the sort of factoid Mac users often throw around. A part is either compatible or not. Ive never come across a laptop with incompatible hardware.
I can give you plenty of examples of manufacturing defects with Macs.
The reality is that you can get the same performance of a $2000 macbook with a $1000 windows laptop. Whether someone prefers one or the other is neither here nor there.