New Laptop

[BlindMelon7]

Hello!

I'm looking for a new laptop for music production purposes. I'll be using this sound card so it has to have a reliable USB connection (I have had problems with this before).

Specs wise I was looking at something along the lines of:

Core 2 T6400
2/3gb ram
Any size HD as long as it is a 7k one
A discrete graphics card (not really for any gaming, although I might play put GRID on it to entertain the band)
And the rest is pretty unimportant

What do you think I should go for? The budget is about £650 without the sound card. At the moment I am looking at either a Studio 15 or an Inspiron 15. I cant really tell what the difference is other than price, but I am inclined to go with the studio one as I can spec it with a 7k hd (even though it is a fair bit more expensive). Who else should I look at?

I should probably add that I will be wiping the HD and installing XP so OS isn't important (I would wipe it even if it came with XP, because of all the c**p they put on them)

Cheers!

[staffsMike]

Dell are acutally very good for coming with clean installs these days, but I agree with you and wipe all my new laptops..

The studio and inspiron is down to a bit of quality (Studio > Inspiron) and the aspect ratio of the screen I think.. 16:10 for the studio, 16: 9 for the inspiron.

Of the two I'd get the studio without a second thought, it's lovely to use and has some quality options and should be backed by the xps end of dells warranty which is very good

I prefer a smaller laptop so the studio 13 would be be my choice but you dont get a lot for you money in this budget.

Always use portable, USB drives with my dells and never had any issues, if that helps.

[BlindMelon7]

Thanks for the reply!

Its good to hear that, I don't suppose a sound card is going to be much more demanding than a HD.

I would prefer a smaller laptop, but the specification is more important and the 15inch ones seem to be better value.

Should I consider another manufacturer or are dell ok?

[staffsMike]

I always buy dell now. I have had a sony, which are lovely made machines but the warranty lets them down and they are generally over priced.

HP, same fate with the warranty and not quite so well made. Horribly unreliable in my experience.

Asus are worth a look at the higher end and Samsung are good but imo their screens (for a monitor manafacturer) are a joke.

[BlindMelon7]

Hmmmm

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...oduct_id=25023

Looks good. Cheaper than the dells

[staffsMike]

Yeah looks pretty good. The hardware is perhaps showing its age but you probably wont notice performance wise.

[muppet_hat]

I always buy dell now. I have had a sony, which are lovely made machines but the warranty lets them down and they are generally over priced.

HP, same fate with the warranty and not quite so well made. Horribly unreliable in my experience.

Asus are worth a look at the higher end and Samsung are good but imo their screens (for a monitor manafacturer) are a joke.

No offense, but I always believed that individuals that bought Sony laptops were naive, as those computers offer nothing extra in hardware, except for various useless softwares and yet add a price tag of more than 200 pounds higher than its compared competitors.

I agree that Dell and HP make great laptops. Toshiba is great too, but they are a bit more expensive compared to Dell or HP.