Or you could just buy one of those portable DVD players. I've seen them as low as $250 on sale. Definately cleaper than buying a laptop just to show DVD's.


I guess they are even cheaper now!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=7415&sku=A299-1101

Ahhh...good point. But the laptop can function as an edit system also! So it could be a decent investment. I have used my laptop to edit material we shoot on the road(like corporate events) ....

But for a good editing laptop you're definately looking at over $1000, not the $649 from dell. Just upgrading the RAM to 512MB and the hard drive to 60GB, and a DVD burner...puts that dell at about $1500. They always give you a great price on the laptop, but as soon as you change one little thing you have to pay the *actual* price for it.

Just hitting the customize button jumps the price up to $791 and without changing anything, and by the time you get to the next page it's over $1000 without adding anything extra to a machine that was $650 just a few screens ago..

Another good point...but even at $1000 for a second, portable system-that can land you business-can easily pay for itself with the first job! I hear your points and understand where you are comming from...but one must make the leap and be agressive to become successful. While $1000 is alot of money- it is a small amount to pay for what could "turn the page" for your company!
I started with Vegas, a laptop and a commitment 3 years ago...and have never looked back-it has been great and that old laptop still goes to meetings with me.

I guess Maverick never did say if he would ever have a *need* for a portable editing system, if so, it looks like a minimum of $1500 for a laptop, if not then he can get away with a portable DVD player for $200-$300. I guess that would be the deciding factor in this whole thing.

By the way...Great talking with you Jsnkc!!!

Great respnse!

Need for portable editing...No can't see it.

Portable DVD players not really an option because I may want to transfer some AVIs, etc. via network just to show how things are going. I could have a copy of Vegas just to show what it is I am up to but I wouldn't want to do serious editing on it.

So, back to my original question;

Would a 2.5 GHz Celeron with 30MB, DVD/CD-RW combo, 256MB RAM onMon-board graphics and a sound card with TV out suufice for my needs.

I know good amount about PCs (have bult a few for editing) but not that much about Laptop.

Cheers

Laptop processors are not quite what they say...that said...go to your local Best Buy, Bring a DVD and you should see that there should be no problem with the setup you mentioned for playing AVI and DVD...as far as editing...not so good. I mentioned trying it at Best Buy...for piece of mind!
Good luck.
Mike

You might be able to use your cheap laptop for some help with network rendering when that becomes available

Someone posted that 1.7ghz Pentium-M (not the mobile Pentium) is about ~80% the speed of a desktop 3.0ghz with rendertest.veg (I didn't calculate, but you get the point- it's pretty fast)

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=226645

I bought a super-cheap Dell 2650 Inspiron about a year ago for $699 including a DVD player/CD burner. It came with 256MB of ram and a 20GB drive. The small drive is of no concern--I bought an ADS Pyro case and mounted a removable tray inside it. I typically use a 200GB drive in it ($120 for the drive, about $90 for the ADS Pyro).

So for well under $1k I have a very powerful and flexible system. It works great, and in fact I'm surfing the web on it right now. It has but a 1.6GHz Celeron, yet has plenty of editing horsepower, and plays DVDs great using either WinDVD or PowerDVD. It does the RenderTest in around 3 minutes, which would have been a state-of-the-art time two years ago.

I would strongly urge getting a laptop rather than just a DVD player--it's so much more capable.

Hard Disk Speed is Critical in a laptop.
Most are shipped with a 4500RPM HD.
Get a 5400RPM HD
Get a great screen...highest rez, contrast, brightness, etc you can afford.
Get the Creative TravelSound portable speakers...about $70 at CompUSA...it's a one piece, compact dual speaker system that puts out great sound from the headset jack on a laptop. I've used these when giving presentations to a room full of people, playing a video through a DLP projector and my laptop.

I got a Sony Vaio FRV 37 for $1349.99 about 2 months ago. P4 2.8, 60 gig hard drive & a DVD burner - it has worked great. I've even edited HD on it (with Vegas of course), couldn't be happier.

Yoyodyne

Well, this is a very interesting thread.

My experience is very similar to your own.

I started with a Dell Inspiron Laptop. I bought it with additional upgrades: extra ram; DVD player as an extra [ those days it was an extra! ] ; mem on graphics card; BIG screen for then . . and something else .. . BUT I then spent spent spent on external hardrives, firewire PCMCIA connections and other stuff . . . THEN 2 years later, I finally invested in what I call my MONSTA! standalone machine . . .. yes I can and do my external firewire drives AND yes the new machine has the Sony ±DVD burning and it has become my pc of choice for my Vegas editing . . .

Look, depending on your budget, you are going to do WHAT you want to do WHEN you are wanting to do it - Do you really want the laptop experience in front of clients and edit transportability now? It is rather cool!. . DO you front end your laptop purchase and additional purchases? Or - if you are considering, and I suggest you do consider even now - do you front end a possible pc standalone purchase?

My response here is more of a "stand-back" and see the over view of what and where you may be going - yeah? I've been in a similar position and I wanted to give you this opportunity to consider these "other" points. My view point is one of business planning. You may think and possibly presently do have enough income to go both routes at once. This is ideal! You could then potentially seek some neat discounts on what would be a nice sale for some pc company .. yeah? he other think consider "soft" bank loans for business start ups. In the UK the tax man has been running - think it is past now .. dunno .. - a 100% tax efficient scheme on pc stuff . . I used this and was certainly valuable to me. Meant I could use the projected tax efficiencies for more purchase - yeah?Check out your own financial options viz Bank/IRS . . Try not to Credit Card stuff . .yes it is good for insurances and consumer protection. But, and subject to normal terms and conditions, in the UK we have 1-Year statutory purchase use cover in any event . . .

Hope this helps . .in summary:

1/ Think about expansion

2/ Think about financially servicing those purchases

3/ Think about what you are wanting to do in the future

Also remember: VEGAS is NOT terribly tied to hardware - as they say at Sony "Vegas is Hardware Agnostic!" . . . Fast 7200RPM hds; se[parate video external HD/s; fastest MoBo and P4 would be nice, plenty RAM for RAM Previews . . .I got other wishes for you . . but I think most of that has already been covered . . .

Regards,

Grazie