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Re: Computer good enough for Live Looping?



Rick Walker schrieb:
> A website advertisement, today,  announced a
> $450 price on this laptop computer
>
> The HP ProBook 4520s XT943UT laptop with
>
>
> Would you advanced laptop looping or laptop video projecting folks 
> think that this is a good enough machine
> to handle, say  the Virtual EDP, Mobius and Plogue or Ableton's Live
> in a live situation?
>
> Does such a computer have the capacity for more RAM?
First, a word of caution: I don't know that specific model, and my 
first-hand experience with HP laptops is years old. That being said...

* According to HPs website, RAM can be expanded to a maximum of 8GB. So 
"yes". (Note, however, that you may not have that much fun w/ more than 
3GB of RAM in combination with the included Windows 7 Home Basic 32).
* The processor is a very advanced version of the low-cost branch of the 
Nehalem family. It uses an integrated graphics CPU, but is only so-so 
when it comes to power consumption (so if you're going for long times on 
battery power, this may not be the perfect choice). Performance-wise, 
it's somewhere in the middle between a three-year old upper-middleclass 
laptop and a three-year-old lower-upperclass desktop - in other words: 
you should be perfectly able to do a lot of fun stuff. For comparions: 
the CPU is more than 4 times faster than that of the computer I used 
back in 2006 to run Ableton Live, three softsynths, Mobius (on two 
stereo tracks) a a few delays - at the same time.
* There's an important thing for live audio use, it's called "DPC 
latency". Didn't find any mention of it in any reviews, so if you find 
that - that should be in the sub-us range to be good.
* Are you using it with an USB or with a ieee1394 interface? In case of 
the latter one, the DPC latency (see above) should also include the card 
bus (because you would add iee1394 via express card).

Apart from that dpc latency unknown - looks fine. Can't comment on the 
price, though...

          Rainer

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