Laptop for music - Mac vs non-mac

[Poxican]

I'm sure there's been a similar thread at some point, but search doesn't let me search for 'pc' as its too short and there doesn't seem to have been an active thread for a few months on this topic so....

I'm looking at getting a laptop, primary reasons for a laptop as opposed to desktop are portability and space.

My primary use will be some home recording. I've got an M-Audio usb audio interface that i'm using with a pc at the moment so I'll use that with the laptop.

Now, as I succinctly pondered in the thread title, am I best going with a Mac or otherwise? Mac fans keep telling me apple is the path to happiness, everyone else is telling me you get more power for your pound with a pc-laptop (is that the term, is pc exclusively a big bulky desktop, or is it more general? I digress...).

I'm sure this is a deceptively difficult question with suitably in-depth answers, but while I was once well educated regarding this kind of thing, I'm now totally out of touch with the computing world, and new to the home-recording world.

If my learned fellow forumites could shed any light on this for me I'd be super grateful!

[jalapeno]

All things being equal if it were me, at the moment it's be a Mac, mainly because of the pain of Vista. Unclear if Windows 7 will be any better. I say this as a PC (& occasional Linux) user - the only Apple kit I've got is an iPod.

But the Mac laptops do cost a lot more for the same basic computer.

[noizesurge]

Originally Posted by Poxican

everyone else is telling me you get more power for your pound with a pc-laptop

'Apple Tax' is a myth, at least if we're talking real savings here (£50+). You won't find a PC laptop with EXACTLY the same quality and performance components for £200 less as many people seem to believe. No, you need to compare bus speeds, GFX cards, Wi-Fi, memory allocation etc... Once you start looking at that then the price gap is sufficiently less (if there at all).

However, what you will find is that a PC laptop (of similar price) will offer a Blu-ray drive, multimedia I/O (SD cards etc...) and generally more USB ports. Now this might be beneficial to you. Of course there are benefits on the Mac side too. For instance, you get a MUCH better OS (performance, stability, ease of use/user interface), better build quality, great customer support and a suite of really good media apps. So in all, i'd say it balances out well, it just depends which suit your needs better (Blu-ray is pointless on a laptop btw ...).

However, what Apple don't cater for is a cheap laptop. So you can buy laptops (and desktops too) for cheaper than mac, but it won't be the same in performance (which may be fine for your needs).

FYI, I finished recorded a 12 track 44.1/24 using protools and a macbook pro not more than 2 hours ago. Point being that 5400RPM drives (as standard in most laptops) are absolutely fine (in case you were wondering). I don't think your m-audio will have the input scalability to warrant 7200RPM harddrive.

[Gdoubleyou]

It's really about the software, choose the software you want to use, then get the appropriate hardware.

I own both platforms, but prefer the mac for audio/video production.

[Danny1969]

It depends on the actual specific models rather than simply Mac or PC laptop. In terms of performance it's easier to get something like a Dell Lat D or E series to run more tracks than an Apple because you fit two harddrives internally .... which I don't think you can do on a Macbook . With one internal Solidstate drive and one internal 7200 I can run ridiculous track counts without using USB or firewire external drives. You could improve the Macbook with a single solidstate drive though, but anything more than 128gb or so is quite costly.

[noizesurge]

Originally Posted by Danny1969

In terms of performance it's easier to get something like a Dell Lat D or E series to run more tracks than an Apple because you fit two harddrives internally .... which I don't think you can do on a Macbook

Officially you can't, but you can if you take out the CD drive . Regardless of that fact I've read that a 5400RPM should be able to deal with appx. 52 simultaneous tracks of audio at 48Khz/16bit. That's quite a lot. However, your CPU will probably crap out at this point negating the purpose of a second drive anyway.

If storage capacity and battery life is your primary concern then I'd go for 5400. If you do or plan to do video projects then 7200 is probably a better option.