looking for a windows laptop, recommendations welcome

[Santuzzo]

Hi,

I want to buy a laptop. I am not sure about the budget, as I don't know how much I would need to spend on a good laptop.
I am thinking of mainly using if for general stuff like internet and e-mailing especially when I am traveling, but I would also like to use it for recording, when I can't access my PC.
What kind of specs would I need in a laptop that would also work fine for recording?
Any specific brands that you guys would recommend?
I do not want a macbook or anything apple, btw, I want windows laptop.

Thanks,
Lars

[RustyMetal]

If nobody is going help, I'll try to make some suggestions. Maybe they'll help. Maybe not.

It sounds like you want a double duty PC for a reasonable price. Probably the same thing a lot of people would like. HP, Dell, and a host of others are fine.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... p+computer

You may want to consider these factors:

With all the time spent on a DAW, one thing you really need that never gets talked about is a dedicated firewall. An effective one. Software firewalls really only catch Internet background noise and the most basic newb attacks. They give you a false sense of security but most any hacker worth their salt or well programmed worm will penetrate easily. This is something everyone needs to be aware of, and need to take steps to prevent.

It's easy enough to disable your Internet connection, turn a cable modem to offline mode, or unplug the ethernet cable from the back of your computer while spending long hours on your DAW, but you would be amazed at how many people are too lazy to do even that. And what about the wireless card most people have on a laptop? It's open that whole time also. It's good to have on a laptop, and most laptops come with one installed. While really handy for mobile Internet connections, it needs to be disabled at the harware level. If you use wireless to connect to the Internet, then you can configure the firebox with a WAP and connect to that for a secure connection.

DEDICATED FIREWALL: (99.9% unhackable and recommended for ALL users!)
This is what you should've used that old 1.0ghz or Pentium I or II computer for that you threw away or hopefully recycled instead. So first of all, you need an older computer for this. One you've got sitting around that was too slow to run the latest OS, or buy one for $25 or whatever.

It doesn't need to be very fast, remember all it needs to do is keep up with your web connection, and that is done in memory. The hard drive is only used to load the software at boot time and write entries to the log files. I have built a ton of these and get many of the parts used at a computer store so as not to use my high capacity hard drive just for the firewall, for example. I even leave an open expansion slot in the back that I stick the ribbon data cable and 4 wire power plug through, to temporarily connect an old 8x CD-ROM to install the FREE software - then unplug it when I'm through. Or you can leave the old CD-ROM mounted in it. Just as long as you have one to install the software. The firebox only needs an extra NIC (Network Interface Card - an ethernet card) for an In and Out connection, a small hard drive - mine is 10gb, I believe a 2gb will work, I think a minimum 64mb ram, 128 recommended - I have a 256mb stick of SDRAM in mine, a second used keyboard, and a CD-ROM to install the software. You can use a cheap video A/B switch to use your same computer monitor for both. You want to be able to watch the firebox boot up every time just in case it hiccups or pukes during boot, or you need to log on to the console to edit the configuration. (Logon as root, type 'setup'.)

Of course the firebox can also work as a Wireless Access Point if you add a WAP and it can be configured as a server firewall and lots of other good stuff like that, but I won't get into any of that. It's not relevant to this discussion. I am only describing it's Gateway role as a personal firebox. You can download and burn the ISO image to a CD from http://www.smoothwall.org - After you have the ISO image burned to CD as a boot disk, set the BIOS of your firebox computer to boot from a CD if installed. Don't try this on your regular computer because it will reformat the hard drive. After installing the software always update the firewall immediately, write down the two passwords you gave during the install process, and then you will have to sign up on the Snort site to get a code to download Snort through the firewall web page interface. (I've never gotten spam from Snort.) It's a little bit of a pain, but you don't want to run without Snort! (IDS - Intrusion Detection System). And please, don't under estimate how important a good firewall is! And I bet not one person listens.

I already had to use a $50 router from WallyWorld for other stuff like my NetRadio in my home theater/stereo receiver, VoIP telephone, and added the Firebox ethernet cable connection from another port on it.
Like this:
ISP)-->MyCableModem-->Router-->NetRadio/VoIP/Firebox-->HubOrSwitch(multiple connections for other computers)-->Computer(s)
(If you don't have any other computers you can use an ethernet cross-over cable directly from the firebox to your computer instead of a hub or switch.)

If you have ever configured a router before, then you are familiar with the private addressing scheme needed, i.e. - router=dhcp IP on the internet side (often 0.0.0.0) & 192.168.0.1 on the internal side, and then the firewall behind it i.e. - firebox=192.168.0.2 and 192.168.1.1 on the internal side. You would manually address your computer with a gateway of 192.168.1.1 and its own IP of 192.168.1.25 and subnet of 255.255.255.0 (These are only examples, but you get the idea.) You can also enable the DHCP service on the firebox to give all computers automatic IP numbers. Remember to use very, very strong passwords, and write them down. Strong passwords include upper and lower case letters, numbers in pairs or more, and multiple extended characters, such as ! # $ % & ( ) + *. I'm sure you're aware of most of these things, but to be thorough I'm trying to cover all the basics.


DAW COMPUTER:
Laptops are more limited in hard drive capacity and memory upgrades than a typical desktop PC because of the compact size. Be especially sure to check RAM upgrade configurations because of the mainboard limitations. You often may be limited to one or two memory slots, so be very careful of getting some memory now thinking you'll get more later.

CPU Speed:
Get as much as you reasonably can, without breaking your wallet. DuoCPU or more is definitely desirable.

RAM (Memory):
You want 8gb and that can be enough, but 16gb is much better - if you can get that much without breaking your wallet. If you will eventually want 16gb then go ahead and spend the money and get it now. Being a laptop it may not be as simple as buying another 8gb stick and slapping it in. You may have to re-buy 16gb and only be able put that in, letting the previous 8gb stick go to waste. Your mainboard that came with 8gb may not even allow a 16gb stick, so this is one thing you definitely want to check on before your buy it.

Hard Drive:
You want eSATA, it should at least have a SATA drive. I don't think IDE is even being made anymore. (See ref link at bottom.)
You may be limited to the 300-500gb range. Don't spend an extra bunch of money to get only a little extra. You can optimize what you have, and help minimize the headache in the event of a system crash and reformat. It's rather simple and I'll show you how.

When you get your PC it will probably be loaded and pre-configured with Windows on C drive. You want to make a D drive to keep your work files on, and your documents, images, videos, and whatever else. In the event you need to reformat the Windows drive for any number of reasons, you can simply reformat C drive and reinstall Windows and all your apps without touching your work files and the rest.
Download the GpartED iso from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php and burn it to a CD to make a live, bootable CD. Reboot your computer with the CD in the drive and boot to it. It is a small shell of an operating system, just enough to run the Gparted program. It's the most popular and stable partition editor. Use it to shrink down your hard drive (the C drive) to about 100gb, and create an extended partition in the remaining empty space then create the D drive within that. Format the D drive (still within GpartED) to NTFS. It can take up to a couple of hours or more to do this. - There you have it. Now start keeping/burning most of your studio work files and whatever else on DVD and keep track of them that way. You'll always have a hard copy of the originals, and you can simply copy them to your hard drive to edit and work on them. Most all laptops and desktops come with a CD/DVD-Writer, and a stack of 50 blank DVDs only costs about $20-$30 at Wal-Mart and most other places. *Edit - I forgot to mention, don't write files to DVDs as some kind of backup or backup method. Create a 'data' dvd and copy files like you would copy them to another folder. Always keep the dvds able to add more files in the future, so you can copy finish mixed files or in between temp files during a project. Another computer should also be able to read dvds like this so you can transfer files to another computer.*

USB/Firewire/Thunderbolt:
I don't know if USB 3.0 has started to come out yet, but the updated USB 3 specs are already finalized and approved. USB and Firewire/Thunderbolt are about equal. Actually, Firewire400 is 400Mbps and plain old USB 2.0 is 480Mbps. Thunderbolt and USB 3 are about 5Gbps, then the updated USB 3 will be 10Gbps. People with cult like Mac logic always try to split hairs even finer to find some reasoning why Firewire or Thunderbolt is always better. The bottom line is when everything starts mass production and is included in personal computers, both will carry way more than your computer can effectively process. So it is a non-issue. Regular Firewire and USB 2.0 is fine for most anything you will need it for. Get what you want.

Ref: http://www.naplestech.com/shopcart/bus_speeds.asp

Hope that helps.



Edit: *Hard Drive section addition - 'Writing to DVDs'.

Edit 2: This is a better Partition Manager. Same base package but the KDE interface.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/partitionman/

I did some partition editing and rebuilding on an older 2.6 single CPU and the Gparted and had to select some stuff like video mode manually that I've never had to do before. So this Partition Manager that I just listed the link for the LiveCD boots into the GUI automatically. As a stand alone live cd it is better for newbs.

[Santuzzo]

Thank you very much!
That's a lot of info right there.

I am still going to use my desktop PC as my main recording PC< so the laptop would only be used for that when I can't access my PC.

[RustyMetal]

Your very welcome.

My main point was one Firebox for the whole house or business. Neither should ever be without one. In this day and age more so than before. Way more so. Hackers go for easy targets to use as pivot points to help cover their tracks before hitting the final objective, among so much more maliciousness that you wouldn't even believe me. We are (most people) so lazy, for them it's like a hacker in a candy store. Until we start taking it seriously and put out a little effort of our own. Sadly that will never happen, despite how cheap and easy it is.

Many newb questions should be able to be answered on the Smoothwall Forum - http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/

[Santuzzo]

Thanks again.
I had never ever considered that option a a firebox (I did not even know what that was before reading your post), but it makes perfect sense to me.
So far, I guess, I have been very lucky with regard to viruses, never really got any serious infection that an AV program could not handle. But I might have to look into getting my old PC from the attic and doing what you suggested

[RustyMetal]

We still need an anti-virus program on every computer. The Firebox is more for security and hacker protection to keep our computers from being used for all kinds of illegal stuff (not to mention all the damage and accessing credit card and identity theft type info) and possibly attacks against our country's infrastructure.

[Santuzzo]

Just got back form the store and bought a Samsung:

SAMSUNG ATIV Book 9 NP900X4D-K01NL Laptops bestel online bij Media Markt

this is the link from the Samsung website:
Series 9 15

[RustyMetal]

Pretty good. I see you got a couple of USB 3 ports on it. So that stuff is being included on personal computers. Schweeeet.


I hope you and everyone else takes me seriously about Fireboxes. It seems overwhelming at first, but it's not that hard. It allows all outgoing, so no program or app issues. And once you have it setup, no more worries.

[Santuzzo]

Pretty good. I see you got a couple of USB 3 ports on it. So that stuff is being included on personal computers. Schweeeet.


I hope you and everyone else takes me seriously about Fireboxes. It seems overwhelming at first, but it's not that hard. It allows all outgoing, so no program or app issues. And once you have it setup, no more worries.

Thanks, man!

Yes, I definitely take you very serious on the firebox-thing. In fact I checked on my old PC on the attic today but remembered that it's HDD crashed, but once I got a new drive for it, it should work fine.

[Santuzzo]

while I was at the store they also showed me this laptop:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP740U3E-K01UB
it was priced around the same price, but they did not have it in stock so the guy told me I could get the floor-model and he'd have the RAM upgraded free of charge from 4GB to 8GB.
Would that have been a better choice?
I am a bit in doubt now if I took the right decision. But either way, since I unpacked the laptop, I could not return it....

[Dickarms]

my question is: who are these hackers that are so dedicated to steal your midi drum loops and 10-take guitar solos?

[RustyMetal]

my question is: who are these hackers that are so dedicated to steal your midi drum loops and 10-take guitar solos?

Don't worry, nobody wants to steal yours or mine.

[Dickarms]

im honestly surprised my laptop does what i demand of it. pro e, autocad, inventor, DAW plus the regular shit.

[RustyMetal]

It sounds like you have a lot of stuff to worry about protecting.


Hacking has gone viral. And that's just the criminal and malicious stuff in the U.S. They don't tell you about all Chinese state sponsored corporate criminal activity, military espionage, even political activism. And terrorism is moving into the electronic 21st century with attacks on the infrastructure to cause chaos and confusion. Not to mention effecting the stock market, banking systems, and our economy directly. Well, you don't rob a bank and drive your own car.

[Dickarms]

i just lost everything a few weeks ago and had to rebuild. learned to back my stuff up.

[RustyMetal]

I want to buy a laptop.

Damn you. I fart in your direction to GAS you back.

I just bought a used Dell Latitude e6500 with only USB 2.0 and 80gb eStata hdd, but it's a 2.27ghz duo core with only 2 mgs of ram but it may have 4 - not sure, and wireless and ethernet, cdrw/dvdrw, Windows 7, docking, mobile broadband, and lots of other goodies. Guess what. $146.

(I can upgrade to 4gb ram for about $40, and the hdd to 320/500gb for under $50.)


Edit (update): This order was canceled by the vendor. Do I have a sign on my back? - It worked out for the best because I ordered the same model @ 2.53ghz, 2 gb ram, and 250gb hd for only $15 more.

[Santuzzo]

I want to buy a laptop.

Damn you. I fart in your direction to GAS you back.

I just bought a used Dell Latitude e6500 with only USB 2.0 and 80gb eStata hdd, but it's a 2.27ghz duo core with only 2 mgs of ram but it may have 4 - not sure, and wireless and ethernet, cdrw/dvdrw, Windows 7, docking, mobile broadband, and lots of other goodies. Guess what. $146.

(I can upgrade to 4gb ram for about $40, and the hdd to 320/500gb for under $50.)

Congrats on the great deal you got an your laptop!

[RustyMetal]

Thanks man. I'd like to have 8 gigs of ram, but it's a little on the expensive side. I'm no studio pro so I'm going to try to get by with 4 gigs until I have to have more.


(The price of memory right now takes a huge disproportionate jump from 2 gig sticks to 4 gig sticks.)

[RustyMetal]

while I was at the store they also showed me this laptop:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP740U3E-K01UB
it was priced around the same price, but they did not have it in stock so the guy told me I could get the floor-model and he'd have the RAM upgraded free of charge from 4GB to 8GB.
Would that have been a better choice?
I am a bit in doubt now if I took the right decision. But either way, since I unpacked the laptop, I could not return it....

I think you got a good deal for a new laptop, and a new one is prolly the only way you're going to get USB 3. Mine might have been pretty cheap, but I'm limited to USB 2.0 forever on it. It's not like I can add an expansion card with it or anything. Even on my desktop, I would be limited to the PCIe hardware limits, which I'm sure is way slower than USB 3. I'd have to be built in to the main board to get the true speed out of it.

How is your laptop working out for you? Not buyer's remorse I hope. If you want to get serious, you did the right thing.

[Santuzzo]

Thanks, man!

So far I have been very happy with my new laptop.
That said, I have not used it for recoding yet, though.
Two weeks ago I was on a vacation trip to New York and Georgia, and I took it along with me, which worked out very well. I am not used to having a computer with me when I travel, this is the first laptop I have ever owned

[RustyMetal]

Same here. I wanted one, but never needed one. It will take some time for you to ease into it, as I'm sure it will for me too. I bought that book from Amazon "Home Recording .... something" and I'm working my way through it, slowly. Haven't started the exercises yet, I was waiting on that $40 for 4 gigs deal for my desktop also. Just got it in an hour or two ago, now my desktop is rocking 6 gigs. Luckily it had 4 mem slots, but my laptop and most others only have 2 slots - so only 4 gigs there.



Edit: Oh, btw. If you or almost anyone else needs some help with a firewall like I described, I'll be glad to help. I'm sure Bish0p34 could also help, and many others in this forum that knows a little basic networking in the form of a home network.

[RustyMetal]

Update:

On a Desktop unit, I added a USB-3 card to a PCIe-x16 slot I had available. I still can't do USB-3 at full speed because of the slot limitations, but it can get close. That's the only way I know of to update a computer that doesn't have the USB-3 built-in. On a laptop, forget it. You just have to pay the extra money for a USB3 capable laptop. Mine is stuck at USB-2 and that will work for recording maybe 2 things at once, max.

[overdrivenel34s]

How much additional security does the firebox solution offer over using a router that has a hardware firewall enabled plus using a decent software firewall on computer(s) connected to the internet router?

[RustyMetal]

How much additional security does the firebox solution offer over using a router that has a hardware firewall enabled plus using a decent software firewall on computer(s) connected to the internet router?

A whole hellova lot.

A router is better than a software firewall on a computer like Windows Firewall, but doesn't come close to a dedicated firewall like Smoothwall.org. Sometimes routers are mistakenly called a firewall because they do filter 'some' packets, but something that is designed to be a stand-alone firewall will always be far and away the best option. Smoothwall has a corporate version. That's how good it is.

HTH

[RustyMetal]

I managed to dig this diagram up with example IP numbering. (DHCP means it pulls an IP number automatically from up stream - such as your ISP.) It looks more complicated than it is.

lan.jpg

EDIT: I can't stress this enough - DO NOT INSTALL SMOOTHWALL ON YOUR COMPUTER! - IT REFORMATS AND REPARTITIONS YOUR WHOLE HARD DRIVE!
Smoothwall has to be installed on a dedicated Firebox HDD. It only requires about a 4 to 10gb hdd, a basic CD drive to install the software, and 2 network cards (one for the incoming from your router, and one for the outgoing to a computer or hub/switch for multiple computers.
Smoothwall is 99.9% unhackable!

* Sorry to sound like I'm preaching, but you would be surprised at how many people, after reading all this, still try to install Smoothwall on their main PC. *

HTH