[LAU] [LAD] How well do thinkpad notebooks work for audio?

[andy baxter]

Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> hollunder at gmx.at wrote:
>   
>> It feels like my several year old PC will crap out soon for one reason
>> or another, so I need a replacement, better sooner than later.
>> This time it should be a laptop and I heard that formerly IBM and now
>> Lenovo thinkpads are of good build quality, even if they only come
>> with intel CPUs and cost an arm and a leg.
>>
>> So, do you have any experience with those for audio work?
>> I'd be most interested in the T and R series and more recent models.
>> Also helpful would be some data that's impossible to find on websites:
>> - What chipsets are built in?
>> - do the usb buses and the like share interrupts with something nasty
>>   like graphics?
>>     
>
> the x61s, while otherwise a very nice notebook, shares an interrupt
> between the 1394 and sata controller, which is kind of nasty when you
> want to do hd recording over a ffado device. i ended up adding a cardbus
> adaptor to obtain decent latencies.
>   

I have one of these (in for repair at the moment), and was wondering why 
I couldn't get decent jack latencies with the firewire card I have (an 
m-audio firewire solo). Is there no way to reconfigure the interrupts in 
software?

If not, would it be worth using my usb hard disk as a recording medium?

What cardbus adapter were you using, and how hard was it to make it work 
with linux?

andy