not sure whether i should thank you for that steve ;-)

but you're right, other than the dell studio it seems firewire isn't flavour of the month any more. lots of laptops seem to be boasting esata, and a few usb 3, nearly all come with some sort of card reader, but no firewire...

bugger

Lenovo (aka IBM) still have firewire (1394) on a lot of their laptops, but you wouldn't know it looking at their simplified specs on their crazy website - have to look at detailed spec documents in their support area to find out for each model..... but I don't know if they have 17" screens or not - some of their webpages indicate they do, but others don't..... their website is a confusing mess

wow christoc, you're right - what a bloody shambles of a site (looking at the australian one).

i'm not sure i'll even bother sifting through it to find out whether a laptop has or hasn't got firewire. my client can do that if he's up to it ;-)

thanks

My last three laptops have been Fujitsu models. They are still the feature leader in laptops, meaning that they still have things like Firewire (1394) and also DVD burners, even in their smaller laptops. Here is a link to a desktop replacement Fujitsu laptop that has 1394:

LIFEBOOK® E780 Notebook

This one only has a 15.6" screen, so it may be smaller than what you are looking for. However, you can get it with a 2.8GHz i7 processor; 8GB RAM; NVidia GeForce card with 1GB dedicated RAM; Blu-Ray writer; VGA monitor connector; mic/line in jack; four USB ports (only 2.0 unfortunately); RS-232 connector (increasingly rare); eSata connector; 1394 port; both PC Card AND Express Card slot; Memory Stick and Smart Card reader.

If you get all the battery options, you can get (they claim) over eleven hours of battery time. I have found their estimates to be valid on the three laptops I have owned.

I've followed laptops closely since I purchased my first Toshiba T1200 in 1987 (which I still own and use), and IMHO, nothing comes close to the specs of the current Fujitsu laptops.

The only downside is that their support is quite minimal. Fortunately, I've had no problems with my three laptops.

Edit: Here's the larger notebook:

LIFEBOOK® NH570 Notebook

This should do everything you could possibly want. Has HDMI as well as lots of other stuff. Still only has USB 2.0, but that's about the only downside I can see.

thanks john,

i'll certainly take a look at them....

Thanks for the heads-up on Fujitsu, John - great to know about battery life especially - I've found Lenovo units have been good overall, but have poor batteries, and now their website is so hopeless, it's just too exhausting to go shopping, even virtually .....

Did you look at Dell models, like the Precision mobile workstation, or Alienware "gaming" lines?

Piotr

My Dell Studio 15 has a firewire port - as does the Studio 17. See: http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/notebooks/laptop_studio_17/pd.aspx?refid=laptop_studio_17&cs=22&s=dfh

Good Luck!
...Jerry

Edit: This is interesting, a quick search on the Dell site seems to indicate that the Studio 17 is only available with i3 & i5 processors. My Studio 15 does, indeed, have an i7 processor. Maybe Dell has come up with a new product naming scheme???

Yep - the higher-end Studio is now called XPS (both 15 and 17).

Piotr

Ran into similar problem November time.
Found a Toshiba P500 on Amazon with Firewire.
i5, 4Gb ram, 500Gb drive.

Works OK with VP10 etc, but not tried with AVCHD

Was surprised by the choice on Amazon but check specs carefully.

Alternative: Laptop plus firewire adapter card.

What about a macbookPro running windows. I do a lot of editing on one happily. It has firewire.

Andrew

Just picked up a Toshiba Qosmio X505 recently. 18" screen with firewire. It's an awesome computer with an i7, dual hard drives and more. Give it a look and see what you think. I got mine on Amazon.

Sab

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=category_browse&selected_cat=2

And I saw Sony vaio F series with adobe RGB screen, had firewire ( this was about a month ago )

I looked and nobody has said this yet:

Lots of new laptops include built in firewire with chip sets that won't capture HDV. My HP is one of those. I can use the built in firewire for hard drives or for capturing SD footage off a mini-DV camera, but it simply won't work with any HDV footage or capturing software. The same chipset is quite popular and can be found in many other laptops including Dells and HPs. What I would do is to actually try out whatever laptop you are considering, or at least find some confirmation that someone is using this laptop and capturing HDV with it before you pull out the credit card.

This may not be an issue if you are using an AVCHD camera or a DSLR or an EX1, etc.

I use a Z7 which can shoot to either memory card or tape. I always use memory card because I simply cannot capture HDV from tape with this computer. When I did web searches looking for a solution, I found that many people have this same problem and they are having it with a wide variety of firewire equipped laptops.