I am full of fail. But Geoff is full of win. And so is tor and Chris.

Decking nails. Primitive fishhooks. Victortoise.

Random trivia: I did not know fishhook sharpeners existed until very recently when I had to do layouts for a company that makes them.

Really? I never woulda thought that anyone would sharpen a fishhook.

Looking at laptops.

I might just have to build a desktop. These fuckers are expensive.

How many dollars do you have to spend on a computerbox?

I can save up as much as I want, though my max price would probably gravitate around ~$1000

For that much, there are lots of laptop choices also. My Asus was about $700 as a refurb, and it is pretty beast. The badass video card in mine means i can't/won't really use it unless it is plugged into a wall though. Still, it is considerably smaller and more portable than a typical desktop would have been.

That said, you could probably build a good recording desktop for less than $500 right now.

Oh yeah. Without a video card, a recording desktop could be built for under ~$500. I have one planned out with a 1gb video for just at ~$500 from Tiger Direct.

But, the laptop still does intrigue me. And you are right, I really can get one for under $1000 easy.

Like this, http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4938

I just need to figure out just how much power I need.

Or this,

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4938

Or if I want the video card, this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4938

A dual core CPU with about 4GB of ram will do most of what you would need. Mine is a pretty old 2ghz Core 2 Duo and will easily record eight channels at once through the firewire(and probably more, that is just the max my interface can provide) and can play back about 40+ with fx on them. Most of what is available right now new, will be quicker than that.

One thing to look for, is a firewire port. Lots of laptops leave them out. The 'gaming' Asus ones have them though. They also have 7200rpm hard drives in them which are hugely useful for recording. Looks like Tiger Direct has a bunch of the refurbs also, which can be a good way to acquire more computer for less monies, if you are a refurb-ish sort. I have been using the shit out of my refurb G51Vx for the last nine months and it has never given me the slightest worry or annoyance.

I am a refurb kind of guy, plus TD warranties them.

Firewire is a damn good point I forgot about though.

So something more like this ...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4965

Actually, I am liking this one:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4965

Here, this is like the one i got:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 1&CatId=17

And this is like the one that replaced that one, but is nearly the same(slightly faster CPU, some other shit i forget) :
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 5&CatId=17

Both have firewire, both have 7200 rpm drives. Both have a slot available for a second hard drive, you would just need the drive and a bracket that you can get direct from Asus for like $20. Both have what was one of the more ridiculous video cards to wind up in a laptop. Which is also why both have terrible battery life, and should be plugged in all the time. On a full charge, i will only get about 45 minutes to an hour out of the battery. About two hours max if you turn all of the shit down and run the CPU at a lower rate, etc. I just leave it plugged in, myself.

Aside from the battery life thing, the only downsides to these things are:

1. They are heavy-ish and kind of big. Almost as if they were 17" screens.
2. The CPUs are pretty oldish nowadays. An upside, is that the CPU is upgradable. Which is not a common thing for laptops.
3. The screen resolution is kind of low for a screen the size they are. Mixing can be fiddly with only 768 pixels vertical to work with. My intent/solution is to get a higher resolution external monitor pretty much solely for mixing at some point. In the meantime, i just find myself using the "hide mixer" keyboard shortcut in Reaper pretty often.

I really love my computer, and feel like it was the best solution to what i needed when i got it. Though, it might be a bit more than what you need on the graphics side of things, and maybe a bit less than what you want on the CPU speed and battery life sides of things.

For the record, the Toshibas don't have the most wonderful reliability reputation out there. Make sure to research whatever model you are looking at extensively and read what the nerds are saying about the ones they own.

That one looks pretty cool! I haven't seen it before i don't think. Search the specific model name G60JX-RBBX05 on the internets and see if anyone has issues with it.

I know that one of the G51/60s had some overheating issues. I think they had a problem with trying to jam a quad-core in there or something. I don't recall exactly if it was that one though, or another model.

It looks pretty solid. The CPU runs at a cooler temp then similar models, so maybe Asus found a way around the overheating

Either way I am experienced in the way of hot laptops. My buddies Dell was a veritable inferno-maker.

I just looked, and i think it was the i7 loaded G51J that had the issue, not this one. I actually haven't seen this one at all.

Interesting to note that though the chassis looks the same as mine, they have disabled the second drive bay by sticking the system RAM in there. Odd. Well, a good thing that the HDD is 500gb instead of the older one's 320.

Strange. I hope supplies last long enough for me to save up cash. But honestly, in the world of the the 'puterfying technomonology it seems the longer you wait the better so ...

Aye, just wait till you have your dollars saved up, then see what is available. FWIW, the one i bought has been in and out of stock cyclically, since i started looking at them last November. They continue to get new batches of them to sell off. And when new batches of older computers come in, they sometimes also come in at lower prices. When i started looking, the G51Vx-RX05 refurb was going for $850. I bought mine at $700. Now it looks more like $650.

You might also find that when you have the money together, some even better option might be available for similar money new. The newer laptops with the Nvidia Optimus shizz, for instance, have MUCH better battery life because they can switch on the fly between a discrete nvidia video card and a low-fi intel onboard one. By the time you are ready to purchase something, some of those might be showing up as refurbs even, or who knows what else will be available.

What Chris said, works for me with my MBP that I've had for a couple years now. My internal drive is only 5400rpm so I record to 7200rpm externals unless it's just a quick demo where I'm only recording one or two tracks at once as I do everything @ 24/88.2 unless I'm not paying attention/don't give a shit.

Drive speed is critical for recording. Slow drives will fuck up. RAM and processor power are for the mixing stage, but for tracking slow drives are , even in an older machine. With a 7200rpm drive, I can get 8-10 tracks in at once into a dual-core Apple G4 with no issues. Would I mix on it? Probably not anything serious. But it works fine as a workstation to record rehearsals.