I'm using a Sony GRT laptop with built in DVD burner ($2500 Canadian). P4 2.67 GHz, 40GB HD, plus a 200GB external firewire drive for projects. It's nice to be able to burn quick DVD demos on location. However, the processor is a regular old P4, so it's a battery hog.

Kevin.

OMG....Just bought two new laptops, with a 3rd being built right now....For me, as a musician, I only use Sony. After experiences with Toshiba, IBM, Fujitsu, 2 custom builds, I'm now on my 13th Sony. (well...personally my 5th) but I love em.
I bought a Sony V505 2.8 gig for my road/air use because it's small, 4.4 lbs, 12" screen. This is great for flying and training. For tradeshows and office running around, I got a 700 series with a 16.5" screen! Big MO HONKA. But it's fast and killer.
The one we're having built is for one of our trainers that doesn't like 'shelf' laptops, so Earl Foote at PC Nirvana is building it. Desktop replacement, 3.06 HT proc, 4 gig RAM, 7200 rpm 60 gig drive, DVD burner, the works. It's a little more than the Sony, but they are great machines.
Never had a Dell, but I know they are now making great desktops. But based on experience, the built in software, and sometimes hardware of many of the 'shelf' machines is incompatible with multimedia authoring unless you totally clear the drive and load just XP. Toshiba for instance, has a very sexy laptop. But.....the MIDI capability via the parallel port is totally screwed, we tried several interfaces. It's all about the motherboard, and my opinion is that Sony has the best mobo's in the world. Plus for me as a trainer, musician, and frequent flyer, the world wide service is a major plus. Saved my butt in Australia last spring.
This new 505 is AWESOME! Only drawback is the single Cardbus, but that's acceptable. Come to DV Expo, I'll be training with it there.

Spot,

How much did the 700 series with a 16.5" screen run you price wise, and what are the other specs that are included in it?

Emmo

Thanks everybody for your feedback!
I don't need MIDI so Toshiba could be an option... I'll probably go with a Centrino M processor for battery purposes (in a plane, I don't want to carry 6 extra batteries in my hand luggage...). I must admit I'm seeing real nice machines (screens are getting really impressing-and I think the 1024-768 def is past now). Both Acer, Dell, a few Sonys (with higher res screens) and Toshibas are, like you say, sexy (especially those 16:9 screens).

You'll regret the Centrino, I'm sure, based on comments from students, co-musicians, and a few posts in the forums...Check it out carefully.
I carry a Targus power supply for the airplane, most of the Delta flights have in-seat power now, so it's a wonderful thing.

Spot,

How much did the 700 series with a 16.5" screen run you price wise, and what are the other specs that are included in it?

Emmo

You probably will still need power on long flights no matter what you get.

Not sure what the "comments from students, co-musicians, etc were"

I posted rendertest results for my 1.7 Ghz Pentium-M laptop a few days ago and the results of this (and other testing with a few of my own projects) match the various benchmarks I have scene (i.e. it is about the speed of a 2.3 - 2.8 Ghz pentium 4)

The Jeff: Ooops! THAT's the post I read some time ago and thought it was done with Centrino. My mistake; since I didn't make some research by that time, I thought these were the same.

Thanks for warning Spot and TJeff, and I'll check out with airline if they got these power supplies on board since all the companies don't necessarily have those.

On the other hand, I saw a battery that's about the size of the laptop's base itself and could be plugged in this one. Do you guys ever used it? They claim a 5-6 hour ride and a quick charge (like 2-3 hours). It's made by a company named Valence. They even got a model that gives you "10 hours" of autonomy (model vnc-450 for Sony-Fujitsu-Panasonic-...).

And last detail: I notice there's 4200/4200 enhanced, 5400 and new 7200 rpm drives. Should I just consider 7200 drives? I ask 'cause you guys have been editing on those laptops since a while and there was probalby no 7200 drives at the time so 5400 must also work? Is the technology different in laptops so that 5400 work? And, as we are there, would I see a big increase in performance by swapping a hard drive in the DVD slot, therefore working with 2 drives?
I didn't check for prices concerning those swappable drives but I ask for further use... And concerning DVD burners, I don't remember which of the formats was the most frequently used: +R or -R ? (I may even consider just getting a CD-RW/DVD and take the money for another hard drive since I probalby won't burn much of those DVDs for now)

Thanks a LOT guys...

...
?

A couple months ago I picked up a Sony GRV series (can't remember exact model) which had the 16.x" screen, 2.4GHz and DVD burner, now a model that's on clearance. It was cool around the house but I found it a real pain to fly with and not much battery life. For my purposes, I decided it was worth it to eat the re-stocking fee to exchange it, and got a Sony Z1. The 14.1" screen is plenty big. I would gladly have taken a 505 over the GRV as well.

I have captured, edited and used Photoshop on the Z1 with no problems. Sometimes when I'm working I can tell that it only has a third the memory of my desktop (more disk activity) but all-in-all it has worked very well. And I like the built-in wifi when I'm sitting in the local coffee shops.

fUtZ:

What matters when trying to avoid dropped frames on capture is the data streaming rate of a drive, not necessarily the rotation speed. Pretty much any drive from anyone at any speed can easily keep up with the 4MB/sec streaming rate of DV. What you DO need is capacity, which is why I use an external ADS Pyro box that can hold any of my 120 or 200 GB drives. It talks to the laptop via firewire.

As for DVD burners, I believe the -R crowd still dominates, but these days, I would shop for price and would be happy with either a - or + burner. I currently have a Pioneer 4X -R burner.

Thanks riredale, good explanation. I take note! I was asking 'cause for desktop, SF recommends having 7200rpm drives...
Jason, looks like a great laptop! you've been running Vegas on this one? Lots of transitions/motion blur/uncompressed rendering?
With Photoshop, what's the size of files you've been playing with? Did you have to do RAW to tiff/jpeg/png conversions?

Yeah, I use Vegas on the Z1. I just did some captures last night, no dropped frames, though my longest was just 25 minutes continuous. That's without having done any cleanup yet of the system processes (e.g. web server and anti-virus still running).

My digital camera is a little Sony DSC-P9, so no RAW, just 4MP JPEG (it is nice that the Z1 has memory stick in this case). I always use the highest resolution on the camera and modify it as such in Photosohp before sizing the image down for Vegas.

I have done a project on the Z1 with lots of transitions but no motion blur or uncompressed renders yet. I'll probably be doing some of that today, actually. I volunteer at a skate park and last weekend I shot the kids skating, which they thought was really cool. Today I'm bringing my laptop over to let them help me edit in Vegas. No doubt they'll want to do all the gawdy stuff. :)

- Jason

I'm from Canada, so brand models are sometimes slightly different than in the States.
After getting your feedback (thanks to all), I'm considering the Sony PGC-FRV35 right now. Only drawback is battery consumption. Get it hugoharris? ;) Holy smoke; 1.5 hour (and that's the "specs" so it's probalby more like 1 hour at the most...) ! I'll try to check something up concerning this.
I guess we still can't have best of both worlds ...
Again, thanks to you guys for feedback!