Hi,

I am currently looking to upgrade my current PC to and would like to
incorporate DV editing. As I work away from home for a couple of weeks at a
time I quite fancy a laptop.

Do many of you out there use a laptop for DV editing? How feasible is this?

I am looking at a couple of Tiny laptops ranging from a Celeron 900 with
20GB HDD/128Mb RAM to a 1Gig P3 with 30 GB/256Mb RAM.
How important is the Laptop graphics ability? Is shared system memory a
no-no? These all have an onboard Firewire port.

One of the other machines I have looked at is the Toshiba 3000-100 which has
a 16MB GeForce Go mobile graphics card. This machine is coming in at around
£1500, for which as you know will buy an excellent desktop system.

Tiny seem to be quite cheap, how come?

Any opinions / recommendations greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

 

How about a G4 PowerBook?

Steve.

 

Yeah, get a G4 Powerbook....

...but wait another month as there is a keynote speech in october and it's rumoured that quicker G4 powerbooks will be one of the announced items.

thus you could get an upspecced one, or a cheaper current one!!

 

I use a Compaq Armada M300. Cost about 3k. Ultra light. Video camera plugs into USB port via 80 quid cable. I have 2 30 gig hard drives - one can be swapped for the DVD drive for simultanaeous use. Edit the stream from player onto hard disc, then copy the heap back. Excellent laptop, but maybe a bit expensive if it is only a toy

 

What about a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook ??

I use one and its superb. 666mhz, 128mg memory and 10gb disk, but much larger ones area available, i am just not allowed one !!

There was a report this week that a bike rider in Germany had one fall out of his rucksack at 120kmh and it bounced along the road a bit. He powered it on, and it booted straight up !!! I have seen the pictures of it.

Have you guessed who I work for !!!

Can get more specs of bigger machines if you would like - let me know.

Dave

 

Definiety go the PowerBook route. Get iMovie or Final Cut on there any you've got a massively powerful portable solution for DV editing. Oh and it looks the business too.

I think the PowerBook are likely to be up-specced soon as sales have dropped off despite recent price cuts. Mootorla are readdying shipment of G5 processors, at speed of upto 1.6Ghz ( 4 x faster than any P4 !! ) which we won't see in products for several month but may reduce further the cost of the G4 processors.


AllanB

 

I have also been looking at laptops and I seem to have found that Dell are very competitive. If you can, try and buy it through a business because they do seem to be cheaper.

 

Just left an all Dell company and I have to say that their laptops are about right now. A few years ago there were quality/feature/price problems, but all are ok now.

I would definately say aviod the Tiny/Time/PC World laptops, used to do repair of that kind of thing, no end of trouble generally stick to a brand name for better Support/Performance/Reliability/Battery life etc.

The company I have just moved to have Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook's exactly as druddle described (Druddle, mail me and tell me who you work for, if it is a financial company) and they seem well liked and reliable.

A good start for buying Dell is the Factory Outlet

 

Edited because I am a muppet

[This message has been edited by polarbearit (edited 21 September 2001).]