[LAU] Laptop for live performance and recording

[julien lociuro]

Hi all,

As you probably know from my previous post (MacBook Pro or not..) I plan to
buy a laptop for audio work.

Here some questions that arise after some investigation.

1) It is recommended to have 2 separate hard drives. One for os/programs and
one for audio files.
    Is it though necessary to have the first one, say the internal one at
7200rpm, if the second one (external, USB-2) used for audio files is 7200?
    Problem is that most of laptops have 5400rpm for their internal drive.
Is it any big advantage of having a 7200rpm for the internal drive too?

2) A thing I've read is that one of the biggest downsides to Linux on
portables, especially Apple portables (assuming the LCD and other
peripherals are basically
working) is poor support for power management - sometimes dangerously poor.
Can anybody tell me if this is still true, and what does this mean?

3) As an audio card I was thinking about the FireWire Edirol FA-66, which is
"reported to work" under linux, and is supported under mac osx.

4) What do you think of these laptops? Especially built for audio. But, can
we trust them..?

http://rainrecording.com/products/livebook
http://www.musicxpc.com/prodtemplate.asp

5) Not all laptops have a firewire port. Most have an extension card slot
(express, etc..) which can be used to have firewire. But from what I've
heard, linux doesn't have (good) drivers to support those cards. Most of
laptops which have firewire have a 4-pin (not ok if you want the 2
additional to have power supply for the card, which is nice for live
performance). MacBook(Pro) has a 6-pin firewire port.
6) As it has been told, a Texas Instrument firewire 1394 chipset is needed
to get proper performance with the soundcard.
    MacBooks have this chipset. But it seems that not a lot of other laptops
do have this chipset (it seems like Dell don't have), some HP have. Anyway
it's difficult to find the information. So here, the MacBook would anyway be
a good choice.

7) some interesting laptops include Asus V1s, Lenovo ThinkPad T61, Dell
Lattitude D830. Anyone using one of those for audio under linux? Do they
have a TI firewire chipset?
   HP8510p seemed good at the beginning, but it's reported that its broadcom
card and ATI graphics card is not well supported

8) would a 13" screen be ok..? There is this MacBook (not Pro) which is
dual-core but only at 13". It seems to have great performance (and 700€ less
that the MacBook Pro). 13" has 1280 x 800 resolution. Is that reasonable or
would I freak out..?:-)Most consumer laptops with 15.4" screens have the
same resolution as 14" and 13.3" screens (1280x800). So if possible
customize a workstation machine with a higher resolution display... like a
dell lattitude or a lenovo thinkpad. These machines will allow you to
configure the machine with a a 15.4" display that has a resolution of
1440x900 or 1680x1050

9) The mac book has a Intel GMA X3100 graphic card (with 144 MB SDRAM DDR2)
shared (not dedicated) with main memory. Is this a problem for audio
processing only? Also, is this card supported under linux? mac book pro on
the other hand has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, which would be more supported
I think.
10) Has anyone used a MacBook and or MacBookPro with 64Studio? If I cannot
use 64Studio on my laptop, this will be very annoying. How to know that the
laptop will be supported by 64Studio? As you can see, I tend to think that a
MacBook is the best choice. It costs around 1100€ (~1600$). Probably not the
Mac Book Pro which costs 2500$.

11) I see that some audio applications are ported to MacOsX. Jack,
freewheeling, zynaddsubfx. Although no midi support for zynaddsubfx. Ardour
I think too.
     A dual-boot mac osx, 64-studio would be necessary.

This is a big mail..lots of questions..hope some of them will be answered.

Thanks so much and happy new year!.

-- 
julien
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