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So I'm shopping around for a laptop for the sole purpose of using Reason 4.0 and Ableton Live 8. I haven't used either of them, but I have messed around with fruity loops 7. Thing is, I was using an old vaio pcg-grx550, which had a 1.6 Intel Pentium IIII with 512 RAM (Top of the line when we got it haha), so once I got better at it and playing more channels at once with vocoders and flangers and things like that, it would skip and lag and sometimes simply shut down.

I want to get a machine I know will be able to handle these programs well, but i've only got $800. Is this enough? I was thinking of getting http://www.officemax.com/technology/com ... rod2980302 Cause it seems like a steal for the price, and using the rest to get a decent external audio card, but I've been lurkin on here for a bit now and wanted to know your guys' opinion first

Wow, that does indeed look like a steal. I just inherited my girlfriend's old dell that has only 1gb of RAM and FL 9 runs pretty smoothly. Massive, however, does take about 30 seconds to open.
Can't wait for my graduation next year... I want a MacBook Pro so damn badly.

Really though, in my unprofessional opinion, that computer looks like a great deal for the price.

Good luck!

I think you can do better.

That processor is a dinosaur already. No jokes. Not saying you couldn't make toons wit it. I'm on less right now, cranking out toons. But you gotta look at your computer like a saw wave. They start high then fade down low. You don't want to make that purchase down at the low side of the saw tooth. Gnaw what I'm saying. You wanna buy at the top, and let it faaaaaade over time.

Buy higher powered, and it will last longer. These prices in general are so cheap bro, if it comes down to it, save up 4 real. You can thank me later!

2.7gig processor, 4gigs ram, hd leaves a bit to be desired but meh cant fuck with it for the price at all

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883103237

Basic A wrote:2.7gig processor, 4gigs ram, hd leaves a bit to be desired but meh cant fuck with it for the price at all

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883103237

Eeewww AMD processor........

Still for the money it does seem pretty tidy. The HD is fine to start with.

@op - Ever thought about building your own mate? For $800 you could build a BEAST of a machine.

Building a laptop, homie?

JFK wrote:

Basic A wrote:2.7gig processor, 4gigs ram, hd leaves a bit to be desired but meh cant fuck with it for the price at all

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883103237

Eeewww AMD processor........

Still for the money it does seem pretty tidy. The HD is fine to start with.

@op - Ever thought about building your own mate? For $800 you could build a BEAST of a machine.

Intels marketing a competitor machine at same price through someone, but, the ram was cut and it didnt have the 5.1 quality outpt from stock either.

Do Dell ship to the US?

This line is pretty good:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/De ... &cs=ukdhs1

Edit - Fuck, just realised you are looking for a laptop. Why is that incidently? You get a lot more for your money with a desktop.

im also looking at getting a new laptop/desktop. Does anyone know how the i3 compares to a dual core?

Unless you've got one of the top end core 2s it will definitely be faster, noticeably faster but imo go for an AMD Phenom II X4, you'll get more for your money (cheaper and faster) this is my advice to anyone looking at a new CPU only major problem being AMD generally die out quicker than Intels but by the time that happens Moore's law will be kicking in again and you'll be saving up for the next gen 8 core walking talking CPUs

Also make sure your current OS and ram can handle and make full use of a decent CPU, then again sometimes it all works out anyway, I've got windows XP 32 bit which apparantley can't handle more than 4gb ram but I'm using 6gb fine. basically a good CPU is only worth the investment if the rest of your system is up to scratch

Could get either these two off Newegg for a pretty good price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834115733

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834157111

Both have Intel Core i5 processors, 4GB of ram, the Acer has a better graphics card and ram and more hard drive space at 500GB compared to the 320GB and integrated Intel graphics card on the HP.

zonetrooper5 wrote:Could get either these two off Newegg for a pretty good price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834115733

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834157111

Both have Intel Core i5 processors, 4GB of ram, the Acer has a better graphics card and ram and more hard drive space at 500GB compared to the 320GB and integrated Intel graphics card on the HP.

Mmmmm the HP one looks sexy.......

DOnt buy anything mobile from acer. I worked tech support for themon one of the call center projects, and we were taught to essentially tell everyone who owned anything from thier mobile line to go fuck themselves, thier warranties were void. Majority of calls came in because of the A/C in will become gimpy n that eventually leads to either motherboard malfunctions or battery problems.

Bottom line is though they know thier mobile stuff is total shit, and they build it cheap as hell because of that. Short warranties. Cheap parts. Thier a dektop company, laptops are just ripoff / sell in mass to uni's sorta things.

used macbook and a fast track pro.

^ disagree.

Still can get way more bang for buck in a win laptop, like 2x, and the fast track sounds like aluminum foil.

Well I'm not rock solid on it, but i'd prefer the laptop for the sake of convenience. I don't stay home much, i'm usually out and about. Plus, i hate sitting in a chair for hours on end, but that's just a comfort and I don't need it. I could buy parts and build my own machine, but I don't know if it's necessary because like nowaysj said you can run it on less than 2.1 GHz.

And i'm not too worried about HD space, because I've been holding on to a 500 gig external for a while now and have never used it.

back2onett wrote:Unless you've got one of the top end core 2s it will definitely be faster, noticeably faster but imo go for an AMD Phenom II X4

I remember seeing some benchmarks where the only scenarios where quad core outperformed dual core were in rendering and encoding. I don't think that would qualify for reason, I could be wrong.

Basic A wrote:DOnt buy anything mobile from acer. I worked tech support for themon one of the call center projects, and we were taught to essentially tell everyone who owned anything from thier mobile line to go fuck themselves, thier warranties were void. Majority of calls came in because of the A/C in will become gimpy n that eventually leads to either motherboard malfunctions or battery problems.

Bottom line is though they know thier mobile stuff is total shit, and they build it cheap as hell because of that. Short warranties. Cheap parts. Thier a dektop company, laptops are just ripoff / sell in mass to uni's sorta things.

Dude that's fucked up... I'll remember that.

I have a big powerful audio pc, but don't use it. I use an underpowered laptop because I can drag it around anywhere. Stupid I know, but it's my reality.