bb,

many may think otherwise but I would turn and run as far from Dell as you possibly can. I teach at a high school and we own about 50 Dell machines. 6 of which were "built" for editing by another person before I came on board. It's taken me quite awhile to even get them up and running to decent editing specs. Their techical support was a nightmare and now I've talked the school into sending these 6 machines to their sister school and giving me the money to buy new ones. I don't even want to see another Dell in my room again. Too many headaches. Some may have never had a problem however I do not believe that these can be good editing systems when Dell is probably the worst with proprietary issues. I'd suggest an off the shelf HP over Dell....

Cheno

So much for me getting my daughter an inexpensive Dell laptop for college.
:-(

Mario

I am always surprised by these discussions.

Why would anyone buy a mailorder PC whose tech support is in India and whose support starts with "format your hard drive and run the restore....."

Your local PC dealer will put together a quality PC with a warranty of 1 year parts (manufacturer's warranty) and often 3 years on labor.

They usually know their stuff and know what goes with what and they build the PC's cheaper than you can buy the parts for.

And they will give you a power supply capable of running the PC without crashing.

And they do the warranty work onsite.

If you buy from a big box store they will send the PC to the manufacturer for repair for as long as it takes.

As far as laptops, buy from the big box store, but check on where the closest repair depot is.

I think the only time I'd worry about a Dell laptop (or any big brand off the shelf) is when it's used for "professional" video editing.
I've done Alienware, Acer, IBM, Toshiba, and Sony laptops. I love the Sony's, but generally I clean the drive before starting. Just because of all the crap that all companies load up for the buyer. How many copies of Quicken do I really need, anyway?

ASUS makes very nice laptops that can be made to order by a number of online vendors. I strongly suggest to anyone looking for a portable Vegas platform, check out there website.

They basically sell a barebones system to authorized dealers who then build them up with standard parts.

Thanks for your input I will will do much more research before I buy.
thats why I posted. Thankyou alll
bb

Im probably a little different to most in relation to this topic as i LOVE Dell.
I love their PCs, support, etc. No I do not work for them!

In relation to the 700m - I own one! Not for editing though, but I cant imagin why you would want to edit on a laptop with a 12.1" screen?

If you want an ultra portable notebook with great system performance - 700M all the way!!

I use a Dell 9100. (now replaced with the 9200 because the 9100 took too many sales away from the XPS) It has worked well for me, but I would suggest a looking back within the last month or so (I think) in the logs here, There was a guy that gave a website that had some powerhouses for sale.

P.S. I would steer clear of the Mobil chipsets from intel

Check in to getting an AMD 64 bit processor too.

Nickle....DELL's India tech support and I use this term loosely is terrible.I have 2 desktops and I couldn't find anyone there who even heard of SATA let alone RAID they kept thinking I was talking about the Serial port. I suspect that this is a problem across all brands. I have yet to talk to any tech support person in recent years who knew more than I did about the box I bought. That is scary as I do not consider myself any kind of expert on tech issues just a 20 year veteran of the upgrade wars.

Fixler... I don't plan on doing any extensive editing on the laptop but would like a laptop capable of running vegas smoothly for those times I need to work with my out of state partners. I primarily do multitrack audio (ie protools, nuendo) and I fly alot so airport hassle is a consideration. The chip and system concern me more as I can travel with my ext data drive and hookup to an ext. monitor when I get there.

Spot ..thanks the viao line is at the top of my list..could you recommend a model?

I have been leading towards AMD as well as it is running Protools very nicely these days
and there is a hypertheading issue as well as a problem with reverbs due to math calculations on the P4 chip.

I have also been looking at Carrilion's line of computers tweaked for audio . Anyone using these with vegas?

I guess a better question would be 'what's the best laptop for vegas these days'?

Thanks for your posts.
bb

I don't get it. I love DELL. At work, I baby sit 60 DELL machines -- a mix of Latitude laptops, Precision Workstations, and Power edge Servers. Granted they are all considered DELL's professional models, but when I need support (and it's rare I do) I am amazed at the consistently high level of service I get over the phone. I'd assume the people I talk with are not the same people you talk with if you buy a $399 system that includes monitor, PC, and a printer for Pete's sake. Then again, I'm not really expecting too much. At home, my Vegas machine is a Precision 350 workstation with XP pro. ZERO problems. Many companies, such as Avid, have a list of approved computers that they recommend for their software, the Latitude laptops and Precision workstations (a.k.a. fancy term for desktop) are on it. So Dell must be doing something right, at least in their "pro" lines.

Very interesting how people have a love/hate thing with big companies. I tend to hate big corporations, but I'm sold on Dell.... and Toyota. If Toyota made a computer - I'd buy it.

I have 2 DELLs my main is the Dimention 8300 3gig not the $399 deal. It is working fine but my experience with tech support is what it was ..I talked to 3 people who couldn't understand what SATA was and then I got a suporvisor who knew what it was and then gave me the wrong information. I'm sure theirserver/pro division is more up to speed.. I rarely need tech support as I've been doing this awhile...but all magazines have been showing an increasing drop in DELL support ratings....off shoring saves companies a few bucks but at what cost...well thats a different post.

Digidesign has a couple DELL laptops recommended on their website which promted my initial post as I am looking for a laptop to run both protools and vegas.
bb

Well, I may as well add my dell story. :)

I started with a dell inspiron 7000 laptop 5.5 years ago. Moved up to the inspiron 8200 2.5 years ago and most recently purchased the XPS. The 7000 worked flawless for the full 3 years I had it. The 8200, I had to return for the screen within the first year (warranty). Then after the warranty ran out, the hard drive died, then about a year later, the cd drive died. After about 8 months, the hard drive drive that I replaced died so I decided it was time to replace the machine.

Looking around, I decided that I would try dell again. This would either be my last dell, or one more in a line of dells. I orded the XPS for the full power I could get. After a week, it quit working. They came and replaced the memory and the motherboard. A week later, they were back to replace the cpu fan because it was making a grinding noise. It still makes the grinding noise and the machine is going back. Yes, it's fast. Yes it's powerful, but it's just too darn noisy to use in any type of a quite environment like an office. The constant dronning will drive you insane! On the plus side, after all is said and done, Dell is actually paying to have UPS come and pick it up. Looks like there is still a shred of light for them.

To replace this machine, I had heard a lot about Sager and after reading about them decided to give them a try. I went with the 3790 machine and the pentium-m 2.0ghz machine. Should be much quieter, and much better battery life. The one thing I wanted for sure was the wuxga screen for use with Vegas. It should arrive monday as ups is showing up to take away the dell. I hope it works out okay. These last 3 weeks have been painful. I've lost steam on a couple of projects I'm trying to get done by Christmas. (I have a real job too that takes up too much of my time).

Anyway, that's my story...

www.hypersonic-pc.com <===== CHECK THESE OUT!!! I saw this site and had second thoughts about whether I was happy with my laptop (I am however) but these guys look like they've got it going on.

I only use the VAIO laptops, in fact, I'm buying a new one just before DV Expo. The new K series are pretty sweet. Anything that isn't Centrino or Celeron is pretty sweet from Sony.

Hi Spot
I looked at the K seris after your first post and they do indeed look sweet and for a bit less than the DELL s of comparable specs. Any info on how they run Protools? Specifically 6.4 LE with an MBOX. Or Nuendo which I my be switching to on all my computers for thier surround features and open connectivity to many firewire audio devices.
Thanks
BB