Appreciate the insight about video cards - I was taking a simplistic "well if I'm doing video then a great video card must help" approach.

There do seem to be two camps about the rest of it though, don't there? Some like yourself who say that almost any laptop will do, and others who strongly recommend fast CPUs, no Centrinos, fast HDD, etc etc. Ah well, more food for thought - thanks for your response.

- Frank

All things equal, faster is better. But any laptop for sale today will run Vegas beautifully. What you get for more money is faster renders and no frame dropping during complex scenes. I guess my point is that the "faster renders" advantage is not necessary to me, because we're only talking maybe a factor of 2x and I can always do renders in the background if pressed for time. As for frame dropping, one can always do a ram or disk preview. But to each his own.

Another consideration is disk size. Even a laptop with an internal 60GB drive is only good for maybe 3 hours of raw and finished video. Many people thus use an external drive (capable of up to 250-300GB) driven by USB2 or Firewire.

As long as you're doing a comparison, you might want to look into the Hypersonic GX6 Aviator. I have one with an 800Mhz FSB 3.2Ghz P4, 1 gig of DDR400 ram and two 60 gig 7200 rpm drives. ATI video with a 15" 1600x1200 LCD screen. It works exceptionally well and could easily replace a desktop.

John

Wow, that Aviator GX6 looks like a beautiful system - and I love how flexible the configuration is. And only 9.6 lbs! Makes me wonder what it is that bulks up the Acer AS1712SMI so much.

It's pricier than the others on my list - my configuration came to CAD $4132 - but I do appreciate the tip. Great to hear systems like the one I'm looking for work well.

- Frank

Got a high end Acer laptop 4 years ago. It worked ok during 3 years but the LCD pannel began suddenly to dim. Believe it or not, no one in Canada can repair it! It seems Acer is truly awfull in term of "long term" part availability and service.

That's why i buyed a Toshiba last year... Be warned!

BTW, if you want special video editing laptop and are not affraid of custom brands, you could take a look here (anyone knows this company?)
http://www.go-l.com/laptops/index.htm

Thanks for the heads up about Acer service in Canada. And those L's look amazing! Not cheap, but I can dream, right? :-)

There has been a considerable amount of controversy surrounding the "L" laptops. Based upon their very stylish web site and the claims for their machines, I actually ordered one before I ended up buying the Hypersonic Aviator. "L" provided several shipping dates, which came and went, they were almost impossible to get in touch with (I almost always got an answering machine, even during business hours) and they did not return my calls. I started to get a little worried since they had over $5,000 of my money, so I found several web sites that had been set up by other people that had experienced the same thing. Turns out no one had received their machines and that no one had actually seen one in "real life." A lot of people were convinced that the company was a scam. This was over a year ago and things may be different now, but the whole experience, plus the testimony of many others, made me VERY suspicious of the company. I eventually got in touch with them and cancelled my order, which they did. I was never out any money, but I had more that a few sleepless nights over it. On the other hand, the Hypersonic Aviator and the customer service has been great .

John

I want to respond to riredale's comment that any laptop for sale today will run Vegas beautifully. I have a Fujitsu - P-4, mobile 2.0, with 512 gig of ram, Lacie 160 gig external hd and Sony DSR-11 deck and have been unable to run print to tape successfully. I get data dropouts. Vegas support tells me the problem is a IRQ conflict instigated by the fact that the firwire port is sharing an IRQ. To compound this problem Fujitsu tells me that IRQ's cannot be re-assigned so now I am stuck with the fact that I have to sell this unit and try and buy a new unit. So whatever unit I buy - I am leaning towards a Sony GRT-240 I will test before I buy.

Cityanimal:

Sorry to hear about your situation, but I do not think it's a hardware issue. Perhaps you could get a second opinion?

I have a dirt-cheap ($599) Dell Inspiron bought a year ago, with a 1.6 Celeron, DVD drive, 256MB of ram, and a 20GB drive. It runs Vegas 4 just fine, and when I daisy-chain an external firewire drive and a camcorder off of a PC-card firewire port, everything plays together with no dropouts. I'm running XPpro. So my assumption has to be that, since ANY new machine bought today has far more horsepower than this little Dell, there should be no reason, hardware-wise, why Vegas can't work well on it.

I don't propose to know as much as the tech support person you spoke with, but aren't IRQs shared all the time from W98se upwards?

Wait a second; there HAD been a problem with my laptop when I first tried using Vegas on it--it seems that the driver for the PC bus was poorly written, and would only flow data at about 2-3MB/sec. Some Dell user took the time to track down the vendor of the motherboard chip, contacted the engineer responsible, and got a patch from him. He posted that patch on his own web site, and alerted others on the Dell messageboard to the issue. With the patch, everything works fine. The sad thing is that, to this day, Dell has never officially acknowledged the problem or the solution, even though it would directly affect anyone trying to flow data through the PC card interface.

I wonder if this could be in any way related to your issue?

Yikes! Seems like there's still some potholes on the road to dv-editing-on-laptops. I just decided to order the Dell Inspiron 9100 - hope it doesn't have the same lousy driver you had trouble with. If it does, I'd be grateful for any links you can provide for that patch. Assuming you remember them :-)

I'd say there's definitely missed business opportunities out there for mainstream laptop manufacturers, who seem to be clueing in to gamers' needs, but still haven't quite nailed those of dv editors. If any one of them had said straight out, "this laptop will handle all your dv editing, capturing and printing-to-tape needs smoothly", I would have gone no further in my own search.

I just got a Toshiba P25 S5...(forget the exact model #)
It has:
-3.0 ghz w/ht
-512mgs ram
-internal DVD+/-Rw
-internal 802.11g wireless
-80 gig hd
-17" WXGA Widescreen (1400x900)
-4 onboard usb2 ports, 1 IEEE

Cost $1899 usd

Runs Vegas great!

Just curious - what's the speed of your hard drive?

Fherr:

Thanks to Google, here's the site.

In any event, I'd make sure there's a return policy for any laptop you consider.

BTW the Dell laptop I bought is a very nice unit, especially when considering the price paid. I'd buy Dell again, even though I think they dropped the ball on this one issue.

Thanks a lot riredale - much appreciated!

- Frank

cityanimal:

Did you try a PCMCIA firewire card? Maybe (and I insist I'm no specailist here) it would work. And at $30, I'd give it a try... here's a link to what seems to be a good one:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-3-port-cardbus-card-gpf113.htm

I hope that helps..!

Frank, thanks for Laptop info!! Based on your recommendation, I'm getting ACER Aspire AS1712SMI. Just wondered if you knew anyone who has actually used it with Vegas? Most sites have non-return policies on it, so I want to be sure. I noticed in one set of specs that it has some "shared video memory." I think at one time that was considered bad for video editing (but maybe I'm not remembering things right.)

Also, anyone buying should be careful of model numbers. The one that includes XP-PRO and DVD RWplus/minus is model number LX.A1506.003 whereas other models have XP Home or optical drive. I've also noticed different specs for same model #'s such as Acer site spec sheet lists 512kb of L2 cache, and other sites list 1Mb of L2 cache.
Barb

Hi Barb! Sorry to say I don't know anyone who has that Acer. I based my opinion of it largely on the two reviews I managed to find, especially the detailed dissection by some gamers at Notebookforums.com.

It does have great specs (and bonus weight-lifting benefits :-), but you're absolutely right, it's important to know if it will work without a hitch with Vegas. The only possible insurance is to buy it from a vendor that will let you return it if it doesn't.

You could try looking on the 'net for an Acer user group forum - they may be able to tell you more.

Based partly on the caution by logiquem (above) that Acer has poor support up here in Canada, and partly on the fact that the company I work for is more comfortable doing business with Dell, I finally decided on the Dell Inspiron 9100. They will let me test it and return it, minus a 15% restocking charge, if it ends up not working with Vegas for any reason.

I was sorely tempted to order the next model up, Inspiron XPS, so that I could walk into the next company meeting with my "Skullz" notebook :-)

I've got a Toshiba P25 as well, only without the DVD burner, as I already had a Sony 510f.

I've done projects big and small, on the internal, Firewire and USB disks and it's all good. I really enjoy the layout on the widescreen. No dropped frames in or out. It's heavy, no doubt, and I got tired of lugging it around in London during a production trip, but at no time was I about to leave it there!

It's no absolute speed demon, but I get repeatable great results with Vegas and DVDA, and it cost about USD $1400 a year ago.

Just think of it as a slightly expensive 17' portable DVD player, that happens to do many layers of audio and video on a bright large screen!

I suggest if you go shopping for a laptop and are worried about disk speed, take a benchmark with you (I use one for audio called Diskbench that's a little outdated, but gives a good indication of what the off-the-shelf system is capable of) and try it on the model you are looking at, taking into consideration that the results you will get on a nearly empty drive will be the highest marks the computer will ever turn out. That's what I did when purchasing mine, and it's done the job.

Good luck and happy laptop editing...it's one of the greatest joys available...I just did an hour long Music Variety show in Guatemala that we delivered ready to air 30 hours after the event....edited in the hotel room and bumped to Beta through a DSR 45. The local broadcaster provided all of the heavy equipment (a couple of Monitors, Beta UVW1800)...all we had to breeze in with was the DSR 45, a couple of laptops and LaCie drives. Redundancy is the keyword when travelling overseas and operating under a tight schedule, so we brought two of any key pieces of hardware, and would have used a PDX 10 if the DSR gave any problems.

A couple of the advertising agencies that bought Avid Symphony systems 3 years ago were kicking themselves when they saw our setup!

Thanks riredale and fUtZ for trying to help.

I tried downloading and installing the OrangeMicro card bus update but still am getting data loss on print to tape. I also do have an Ads Pyro firewire pcmcia card installed which adds two fireports to the card slot. Stil have data dropouts. Am really frustrated. Anybody have any other ideas?

Just in case anyone finds this thread through a search, I thought I'd post the outcome. I just got my Dell Inspiron 9100 today and did a quick test in Vegas 5, which it passed with flying colours. Captured 5 minutes of video from my digital camcorder without a single dropped frame, and the reverse "print to DV tape" process was equally hitch-free. Haven't had time to put it through any more rigorous paces, but I'd be surprised if it had trouble with any of my usual editing routines.

Colour me thrilled - no more being tied to a desktop!!! I know this is no big deal for all you long-time video road warriors, but to a meek, mild-mannered desk monkey like myself it's like someone just left the zoo gates wide open.

Specs of this laptop are:
P4 3.2 GHz with hyperthreading
1 GB RAM
60 GB hard drive at 7200 rpm
WIndows XP Pro

It's a fairly heavy machine - pretty quiet though - but great overall. Dell loaded a lot of garbage software but I just did a HD format and reinstall of OS and drivers. Looking forward to doing lots of video on this thing!

- Frank

Frank,

The Dell 9100 was an excellent choice. I've been using a Dell 8200 for editing while travelling for a couple of years and it has been trouble-free. The new Hypersonic Aviator GX6 has been working flawlessly as well.

Congratulations and have fun!

John

Thanks John!