Better Laptop Option?

Assuming same price, what's better : An old used laptop with higher performance/capability features or a newer laptop with lesser performance/capabilities?


Also, does anyone know any inexpensive laptops that are good for music production?


Outside of music production potentially, (not very optimistic on that front after seeing the laptop price range to run Music Production equipment) I'm basically interested in what's good for surfing the internet and being able to store a good amount of programs/files/apps.

 

i bought new lappy a few weeks ago,, first was Toshiba cost $470.00 win10, blah blah Staples.., crappy wifi drivers keeps dropping my connection. took back.
I goes to Best Buy get an HP for $250.00 win10 blah blah .. been running great.
Ive the Mustang amp through the pc and its fine, but other than than production, like sound boards and recording .. na, I wouldnt know to much about that. .

 

I'd probably tend to say the old laptop with higher performance is "better". Being newer, by itself, doesn't automatically make it better. Why is the old laptop the same price as a new one, is it because of the significantly better hardware capabilities, and a new one with that same hardware would be significantly more expensive?

 

Why a laptop if the desired application is music production?

 

Yah, that's one reason. If there are other variables worth considering to have as high priority when making such a decision, I'm open to guidance as well.

What about like a line of laptop that's no longer in production, yet has some good reviews? Is there like kind of a cutoff point in terms of model, where the laptop may not work well with new browsers or programs or anything?

 

2 reasons: The first is that I'm out and about quite a bit, sometimes with downtime, which means I could work on production with a Digital Audio Workstation. The other being that some D.A.W's have live mode features, which makes a laptop ideal to have a controller or instrument connected to if playing live.

 

I'd definitely go for an older laptop with higher specs. You do have to be wary though. I realized my knowledge was out of touch when I started looking into computer specs. My brain is still wired to look just at the processor speed from back when I was taking apart Windows 98 computers! I'm not used to looking at whether it's dual or quad core. (I'm obviously not looking at 6 or 8 core processors on my budget!)

Then, if it's a laptop, you should look to see if it's got integrated or dedicated graphics if you're looking at doing any gaming. I've heard dedicated graphics are better. That way the ram isn't shared between the OS and whatever application you're running and there may be a chance that it's not soldered to the motherboard. That way you can upgrade it or replace it if it shoots craps.

You also have to look at what architecture it runs on. I'm not sure, but I think DDR3 is the best right now? I'm still playing catch up with computer specs. Really though, depending on what sort of music production apps you're running, you'd probably be fine with anything over 2.1ghz dual-core. I'd say between 2.1 and 2.4ghz dual-core would be perfect for editing. Anything under 2.0 seems like it's pretty sluggish to me. You want to make sure it has at least 4gb of ram too.

You could build a desktop that out-performs PS3 and Xbox One for $5-700. HP is good now, but stay away from the early Pavilion models. They're nothing but trouble... I did make mine last a good 7 years tho.

 

video ram can be faster than the system ram, as well as the gpu not having to spend so much time waiting on the bus as the bus isnt shared with other devices.

never seen a laptop with a real "graphics card" on an expansion card that you can remove/replace. maybe some gaming laptops might have something like thst though. used to be everything was an expansion card because back then the "motherboard" did far less .. essentially a backplane for the CPU front side bus and maybe a memory controller, I/O controller, BIOS and stuff like that. Some stuff that used to be on the motherboard now they build into CPUs and stuff that used to be on expansion cards is either built into the motherboard or other devices (like disk controllers).

 

so long as the hardware is supported by the OS (and drivers) then other user programs should work fine since they just use the interfaces provided by the OS and device drivers

if it gets good reviews thats a good thing ... bad reviews then i wouldn't touch it.

 

Okay, fair enough... IF you are willing to accept the limitations.

Wait!

Full stop.

From my experience, if one wants a gaming computer, get a gaming computer. The things that make that capable aren't needed for music production. If you want a DAW, get a DAW. If you want a good all around toy, get the older model with higher specs but don't expect it to excel as any of the above.

The deal with using a laptop for music production is you will be stuck with the crappy onboard sound card, usually some variant of RealTek. They are capable at best. You cound come up with a mix that sounds "great" through your headphones but the EQ is so far off when you get it on a real studio system you may as well start over. They can be that far off. Or you are also going to have to use some form of external sound "card" which is more equipment to carry, it won't run off the laptop's battery and it adds latency.

Sure a lot of guys use laptops for music these days, hell they are even selling stuff to use a tablet or your smartphone as a "DAW" but for me a DAW is something that only a full size system can handle properly. If you need to take it to gigs build it into a rack enclosure. Can it be done on a laptop, sure, IF you are willing to except it's limitations.



Get the older unit, add a solidstate drive and max out the RAM. Enjoy!




.

 

Could someone translate?? I can't understand a word this guy's saying. :d

j/k... I understood some of it... Like I said, I'm still catching up on the tech. And by the looks of it, I need to do a bit more research before attempting my own build. Plenty of time to do that w how expensive it can be.

Oh. Yep. I got a little carried away there wandering from the topic. From what I experienced, processing power is a major player in music editing. I like that advice at the end there tho lol. I'm excited to see the actual performance of a SSD. It's all I ever hear now. 'SSD! Get you one!' hehe

 

I guess since I brought it up I should add a few caveats about solid state drives, especially with music production but in general.


First, the main reason I hear people telling you "You gotta get one of these, Windows boots in like 8 seconds, man!" Yeah amazing the first time you see it, but not a reason to shell out the big bucks. Boot time means nothing.


For recording music though, there's theoretically zero recording lag. This is nice! Especially at higher bit rates. There is a problem though with SSD's They have a limited amount of write cycles before they can start having problems... This means you can only write so many times to the drive... actually to each cell on the drive. Reading is unlimited. It's still a huge amount, but compared to a standard HD it is a limitation. Ideally when working music production your editing should be done on a standard HD and your recording and DAW software, VST's etc. should be on an SSD for performance reasons. So if it's a laptop with only one drive bay get a big SSD. Your editing happens at home with an external drive attached. (USB 3.0 would be ideal, but an older system may only have USB 2.0 or 2.1 which is still okay for editing)


This write cycle limitation is also why an SSD can't be defragmented... You use an application that should come with the drive to do this "cleanup" but Window's defrag could bork your SSD. The application that comes with the drive relies on something called "TRIM" which is part of Windows 7 and newer... Running an SSD with XP or older is not recommended, or at least you won't be able to do any maintenance to the drive.. (I don't think Vista had TRIM either) TRIM doesn't work by itself though, it's just a needed tool and Windows itself doesn't have an app that can use it. Most SSD manufacturers produce their own software for this. Make sure before you buy an SSD though, you will need this capability.


Another editing thing for at home would be an external monitor, because you are going to need the biggest desktop possible when doing editing. (My DAW has three, 23" monitors as one continuous desktop.) Besides the DAW software being open, taking up most or all of your screen, you are also going to want any VST's and your mixer open for adjustments on the fly. Switching back and forth between views takes time and having one thing ontop of another get's distracting. This is another reason I personally don't see a laptop as a "go to" tool for music... I need a desktop/tower with 3 monitors, one tiny screen would frustrate the hell out of me.

All that being said, and SSD can wakeup and older Win7 higher performance system and make it capable in today's music production.

 

SSD's don't actually need defragmentation because there is no physical seeking like in a hard drive where the heads have to physically move perhaps a long distance across the platter surface. With an SSD, for all intents and purposes you gain nothing in performance from defragmenting anyway (and it would wear the memory unnecessarily)

 

Ummm.... Isn't that what I just said?

 

you said that you can't/shouldn't. I was just adding that it's not necessary anyway, so this is not a negative thing about SSDs (it's actually an advantage)

 

But they still need TRIM cleaning and error checking... Technically not defrag but still maintenance.


EDIT to say I never said nor implied that not being able to defrag was a negative thing.

 

You could hook up a multi-monitor setup with a laptop, but the display lid might get annoying. It depends on what hookups you have. VGA is usually standard, HDMI is mostly standard on newer laptops. I had some sort of other strange usb/video multi plug on my old laptop, still not sure what it was. It had a piece of plastic in the port that made it look like an HDMI port (and that's what I thought it was for the longest time), but the shape of it had more squared notches, while HDMI is beveled more diagonally.

By no means is it practical, but still possible lol. A remote and IR receiver (if not included) would probably come in handy for all that nonsense. Wireless keyboard/mouse/combo, etc.

 

May as well just build a tower....

 

sounds like DisplayPort.

 

I thought display ports were more square and rounded on one side? idk, I watched an outdated video on video out connections lol. Personally, I still haven't come across any computers with SCART connections. Got an old Dell LCD screen that supports it tho!

As I travel further from the original topic...