Suggestion please on a laptop for editing

vegasmon wrote on 9/10/2010, 9:11 AM
I primarily use my core i7 desktop for working on projects,but recently I'm finding myself being more away from my home studio.

I need to a laptop not too expensive ;

1. WinXP Pro (all my apps are under this OS) upgradeable to Win7
2. Processor 2GHz or higher (Quad core or higher)
3 . 2-3gb of Ram
4 .Firewire support
5. Dedicated video card
6. Long battery Life is a must
If any of you have any suggestion please let me know.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/10/2010, 10:34 AM
unless you need some specific feature, a $400 laptop would do great as a portable editing machine. I use my wife's some times for portable editing, works great. It's nothing special.
kairosmatt wrote on 9/10/2010, 10:47 AM
double check the firewire before you buy.

Many off the shelf laptops from HP, Dell etc aren't coming with firewire.

kairosmatt
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/10/2010, 11:01 AM
oh yeah, that brings up the only point I wanted to (and forgot) to make:
if it doesn't have firewire make sure it has an expansion slot for a FW card & you can get a card for it. :D
Laurence wrote on 9/10/2010, 12:49 PM
My HP laptop has a firewire port, but it may as well not have. It doesn't capture HDV video. Yeah it works on regular mini DV, but I haven't used that in a couple of years now. It's not just my HP either. Lots of name brand laptops use a chip set on their firewire ports that isn't HDV compatible. It sucks, but you may as well be aware of it before you charge the plastic.
kairosmatt wrote on 9/10/2010, 1:05 PM
I've also had issues getting Vista64 to even recognize firewire.

Same computer rebooted to XP and the card works perfect.

I read that there is a registry hack that will make it work, but since I have XP and Vista otherwise working perfectly for me, I figured I'd let it go.

Does Win7 64 have the same issues?
Zelkien69 wrote on 9/10/2010, 1:35 PM
A $400 laptop will not efficiently edit video. I have 4 laptops ranging from an inexpensive AMD processor (your $400 laptop) that my son uses, up to my main laptop which has a Core2Duo T9300 2.5Ghz processor, dual hard drives, and a dedicated video card. Guess which one doesn't edit video.
You reasonably need one of the new i7 processors, but at the least a good core2duo. Good meaning 2.0Ghz processor.
Editing on a laptop can be done but your going to need to spend a little and at least get an i5 or good core2duo.
Chienworks wrote on 9/10/2010, 2:39 PM
I suppose that depends on your definition of editing. Yes, you can actually edit on a $400 laptop or a 6 year old laptop. What you won't get is good preview frame rates or fast rendering. However, if you need to cut something together while out in the field, lowball hardware can do it.

There have been times i've needed to get some work done on a major project while i'm traveling but don't have space to carry it all on my laptop or didn't have time to copy it over. I've used the remote desktop function (actually i use RealVNC) to connect to the home desktop PC. Preview frame rate is about one frame every 3 or 6 seconds. It can take 10 or 20 seconds to scroll the timeline. However, it works. I can make cuts and get work done and start renders running.

Any cheap laptop will run circles around that scenario.