OT: Gateway laptop good for mobile editing $549.99

Coursedesign wrote on 9/30/2009, 9:37 PM
CircuitCity.com has a lot of good deals nowadays.

This Gateway M-6888u Laptop Computer is suitable for mobile video editors thanks to 4GB RAM + 512MB dedicated Video RAM (the latter is a hard requirement for some post support apps):

Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 2.0GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.4" WXGA, Vista Home Premium 64-bit

You need to check reviews for yourself, I can't vouch for this product, but it seems very hopeful at a great price.

UPS Ground shipping for $1.99...

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 10/1/2009, 9:54 AM
I'm not sure I'd want this for editing, although perhaps the price is good.

No Firewire port. I realize many people have moved to AVCHD, but I still use DV and HDV and would want to be able to capture to the laptop.

No line in jack. I would want the ability to capture line audio.

Only a 5400 rpm drive. This is OK for capture, but will make certain editing tasks sluggish.

And finally, it uses the newer Express Card slot for expansion cards. This is fine for most people, but all my cards are the older PCMCIA card.

FWIW, I purchased a much smaller laptop, a Fujitsu P8010. It has amazing battery life, is one of the smallest laptops which still has a built-in DVD drive; has a Firewire input; a standard PCMCIA slot; and a jack that can be microphone or line-in.

LifeBook® P8010 Notebook

Coursedesign wrote on 10/1/2009, 11:04 AM
For those with more money, there is always the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 1066 MHz FSB, 4GB PC3-8500 RAM (max. 8GB), 320 GB HD, 1 high performance PCIe Nvidia 9600M GT GPU with 512 MB GDDR3 dedicated VRAM + 1 battery miser video card for everyday stuff, 8-hour lithium-polymer battery that can be recharged 1000 times (vs. 200-300 times for most others), Firewire 800 [400 w/adapter], Express Card/34, 17" LED FullHD 1920x1200 screen with a 60% larger color gamut than fluorescent-backlit LCDs, multi-touch trackpad, and lots more for $1849 at PC Mall, with Parallels 4.0 free AR. Cheaper than the closest Dell, and it has the best screen I have ever seen, by a wide margin.

I have a 5400 rpm drive in my laptop but edit uncompressed on a 2-drive eSATA FirmTek enclosure hooked up via the ExpressCard slot. This has a higher throughput than any PCMCIA interface (even the latest CardBus cards in double-word burst mode) or even Firewire 800. Sustained writes at 146 megabytes/second.

Note that you can plug in your CardBus (recent PCMCIA version) card into an ExpressCard slot via a small adapter.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/1/2009, 12:17 PM
Note that you can plug in your CardBus (recent PCMCIA version) card into an ExpressCard slot via a small adapter.I didn't know that -- that is very useful information. Also the specs on the laptop you described are amazing, but which laptop (what brand) is it?
Coursedesign wrote on 10/1/2009, 4:36 PM
Oh, sorry.

Apple.
Coursedesign wrote on 10/1/2009, 7:40 PM
I saw it at a local PC Mall store, couldn't find it online at first as they hid it quite well (I think they want customers to find the more expensive models first :O).

Here it is: MB604LL/A

Coursedesign wrote on 10/5/2009, 9:51 AM
Now is certainly a good time to buy a laptop...

In addition to the Gateway deal above, there are a number of deals at Staples:

HP dv6-1030us: Core 2 Duo, 16" LCD, 4 GB RAM, 320GB HDD, $450

Gateway MD7822u Core 2 Duo T6400, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, 15.4" LCD, 8x Dual Layer DVDRW, WiFi, Webcam, Vista Home Premium (64-bit?), $399.00!

$399 is in netbook territory...

Office Depot:

HP G70-460us 17" LCD, 3 GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Wireless-N, Vista Premium, free Win 7 upgrade, $529.99 after a $50 rebate

These are amazing deals, we should have a recession more often. :O$

jeff-beardall wrote on 10/5/2009, 1:04 PM
macbook pros are great...i have one, but if you want to run esata on expresscard34 with windows 7 64 and, I believe, Vista 64 bootcamped, you'll be SOL for the time being. If anyone has found an expresscard34 esata card that works under windows 7 on a macbook pro, please let me know! I'm seriously considering ditching my MBP for a PC just to have esata again.
Coursedesign wrote on 10/5/2009, 1:43 PM
No problem if you can live with XP (and why shouldn't you?):

FirmTek Seritek 2SM2 Express34 eSATA card

"...compatible with Boot Camp and Windows XP."

I have this card and it works great.

They will probably have Windows 7 drivers before long, they have been on the ball in the past.


Some of the cheaper cards don't work in machines with more than 2 GB RAM, this one works fine.