burns

iTrader: (1)

I'm thinking of buying the area 51 m9750 laptop.I want super fast video editing but don't want to go down the Mac route.Any thoughts ?

Iain Young

I used to have one (not that specific model) and it was a nightmare. Unreliable machine, poor build quality, expensive, and very poor customer service. That may have improved since Dell took over the helm, but I wouldn't touch them again...

p.s. why use a laptop for super fast video editing? Surely a desktop with proper (large capacity) HDD drives would be better suited...

Vampire

I looked at Alienware briefly, but in the end went with a Rock.

rock :: Welcome :: Ultimate performance gaming laptops and notebooks

burns

iTrader: (1)

I'll keep that in mind with the alienware ,as for why I want a laptop, I can't stand desktops and the laptop I was looking at has a 500 GB 7200 sata HDdrive,so best of both worlds.I have to look at some other options.

Iain Young

Fair enough. Bear in mind however, that when video editing, it's usually best to be editing / capturing video files on a different drive on which the operating system is installed (not just a different partition). Not so much of an issue these days as it used to be, but you can still get dropouts during capture if the OS decides to update something while you are capturing...

burns

iTrader: (1)

Ok I've gone totally the other way and ordered the Dell xps m1730 upgraded to an inch of my budget.I have a couple of Dells at work and have always found them to be very stable to work with ,so hopefully the xps will be the same,I've already got a usb HDD which I may use to avoid possible dropout(I'll have to see ).
oh well just got to wait for delivery now
4 weeks at the moment.

Iain Young

XPS machines are quite nice

USB2 drives barely have to speed to do proper editing (especially when doing on the fly transitions etc). You'd be better of with a 2nd internal disc...

burns

iTrader: (1)

it's already got 2 7200 sata HDD's in RAID 0 configuration,I don't think I could jam anymore hardware in there,and it's already a big bugger for a laptop,I'll see how it goes.
I haven't found one bad review yet,that gives me hope

burns

iTrader: (1)

laptop due for delivery 5/12/07
Just got to work out what will work with Vista

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Just seen this thread. Is there an option for eSATA connection on a laptop? If you get external SATA drives they will work at the same speed as your internal drives.

Maybe you can get a docking station or something that will offer that kind of connection for you if you are pushing a lot of info off to external drives.

Otherwise I would go for NAS external drives (Gigabit only). Make use of your LAN rather than rely on USB2. USB2 is pretty fast, but it uses a lot of a computers overheads in order to make it work, slows everything else down while its running.

burns

iTrader: (1)

I think I'm going to wait until my xps arrives and then see how it handles the tasks I want to do.Then decide if anything needs to be done.

essexboy30

iTrader: (1)

How have you found your XPS?
Mine is quite unstable at the moment... begining to annoy me TBH.
Also what software did you opt for to do teh editing?

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

Just seen this thread

I also looked at an Alienware but in the end went for a Rock, never looked back, great piece of kit.

Good luck with the XPS though