I’ve recently started getting massive overheating issues with my laptop. And its been a bit of a general purpose workhorse for the past couple years as it is with downloading and surfing the net …
So I was wondering if you guys could help me out …
i’m ready to grab a new laptop specifically for controllerism and controllerism only. I want to spend somewhere between 500 and 1k dollars.
I had read a post on another site where someone had suggested buying a computer with a really sick CPU but lacking in RAM so that you can just buy some after market RAM for a cheaper price and replace the stock RAM. Just an idea to save some much needed money as i’m going to need to purchase a sound card as well.
I’m using a Novation Remote 25SL with Traktor … and ideally , i’d like to have a seperate midi controller hooked up for vst uses so I can solo over tracks as well …
Those laptops are fine. i mean, really if you treat it right almost any laptop would work. 4 gigs of RAM, a 2.0 dual core… 250 gig hard drive… it’s got the bare necessities.
I bought myself a white macbook (early 2008) 2.4 ghz, 160 gb, 3 gb ram for $1000. I like the OS a lot more than Windows XP and Vista. I would say wait a little until after Christmas. There’s going to be a lot of people who receive laptops and either sell their old one or sell their new ones.
Buying it brand new in the box or slightly used should save you quite a bit (enough for maybe another controller =-D) and you should still be covered by the warranty. Hopefully this helps.
Craigslist became my best friend after I saved about $1000 buying items slightly used. Maybe it’ll be yours as well. Cheers.
@ Andrew - Thats a good point about christmas and checking craigslist. Thanks.
@ Sleeps - I was wondering about those lenovo computers - I didn’t realize they are IBM’s.
At this point i’m not just looking at CPU speed but i’m looking at the FSB the L2 Cache , the Hard drive speed [7200 rpm] , ect … Alot of the 750-1000 dollar laptops have 5400 rpm drives and are generally not setup for speed.
yea you kinda have to dig through all the refurbished stuff to find a good deal. i’ve noticed a lot of 5400 rpm drives too, but thinking i may run a second partition on an external hard drive thats faster for my music apps. since i will need more hard drive space anyway
Im an Apple guy and let me tell you, downtime. When your computer needs to be repair they do it ASAP, depending on what store you go to. Either way when you buy a computer take another look at the service, especially if your doing gigs and the downtime hurts your business.
yeah … apples are fast becoming more and more considered in my eyes … however , at the same time Its tough to give up the PC compatibility. There’s just way more , audio software wise , for the PC.
metaverse, I’ve just switched to mac and so far I’ve never had any compatibility problems but I guess that depends on what your needs are. Sibelius, NI Komplete, Cubase and Traktor all have mac ports so that wasn’t a problem. My friend who used solely fl studio had a hard time on the mac and had to switch to another sequencer.
I completely agree with pjsleeps. Just get an external hard drive at 7200 rpm that uses firewire. Also ya, the downtime when you send in your mac to applecare sucks. From experience, it takes at least two days to have it fixed and sometimes may take longer. What’s great is that if a part needs replaced 3 times, you get a new one. You can get extended care on a pc as well but depending on where you go, the service I find isn’t nearly as fast as apple.
It all boils down to what you can afford. If you can afford it and if the fsb and hard drive speed is important go new, if not then wait a bit longer and buy it second hand. It’s just a personal opinion but I don’t think the fsb and the ddr3 ram on the newer macbooks are worth the price or will make a huge difference for djing especially when you can get similar macbooks at a much cheaper price.
Macbooks are cool but you really gotta be willing to give up some compatibility, there are alot of really cool vst’s that people have created out there that will only run on a PC. That said there are alot of good VSTs for the MAC too but there are clearly more for a PC. With Djing its not so bad as you dont really need access to as many effect as if you were if you were producing so i dont think the transition is from pc to mac is so bad for dj.
If you have spent your life producing on a pc and have become accustom to the awesome selection of VSTs availible for the platform the change isnt an easy one to make. No doubt you can get by though and still produce awesome music that will rock crowds on a mac though.
That immagine that might get an application running but not a VST, like you might be able to run FL studio but you wont be able to run dblue glitch
You should start another topic about that program though and talk about some of the pro’s and cons of its use. Does it use driver emulation ? Whats the performance like ? i would be interested in hearing more about it from a users perspective.
