Re: using laptops for music

["Kris Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

> so yes Kim you're right, if they _just_ want performance they'd go with
> AMD. but they'd have to take a number, and Intel seems to like them.

I think it is more complicated than this. There is a lot of comparison data
and tests out there, but not all of them compare apples with apples, and it
is even difficult to compare apples with apples anyway...and when/if you 
are
able to, they may fair differently in different orchards. For instance,
comparing just processor speed may be comparing apples to apples, but from 
a
performances standpoint, it's about the systems and how they fair in
different usability contexts. When you compare one PC performance with
another, there are many ways to do this using different benchmarks. 
Desktop?
Notebook? For which applications? For which users? Commercial or Consumer?
etc If we are talking mobile notebook computers, neither Intel nor AMD is
beating the other across the board on ALL the benchmarks, meaning using all
the possible criteria, usage models, markets, customer satisfaction 
indexes,
etc. All these performance tests assume a specific set of criteria. They
control the parameters and select a set of criteria and benchmark where one
system out-performs another other, but you can easily change the usage 
model
or criteria and get different results, where your criteria is not how fast
the processor is or how well the system performs in some specific context
(like gaming), but how well does it perform with business apps, different
environments, etc

Basically, what I'm saying is, after we get past the AMD/Intel/Apples dick
measuring contests, that there are two sides to the story depending on the
context....this makes it difficult to make generalizations like A is flat
out better than B, when there a hundreds of contexts to test this, and
hundreds of ways to represent A and B.

Bringing this back to looping, one acid test is to get some of these 
systems
that claim to compete with each other (like an IBM, HP, and Dell with both
Centino and AMD processors, an Apple, etc), based on similar specs (RAM,
relative processor speed, etc), load them up with the same applications,
like a VST host (EnergyXT, Plogue, Chainer, etc), the same VST effects, and
the same looping software (e.g., Mobius)...and then let's see what happens.
Has anyone done this? Until someone does, we just have to base our choices
on what others are using in our looping community.


Kris