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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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 Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 2:48 am Post subject: Quiet laptop or similar for the road |
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Hi all
Well I swore I'd never do this, but we've both been working our tails off here and badly need a week or two in the sun, so.... (deep breath).... I'm putting together a first time portable recording rig so me and the missus can grab some much needed r'n'r without leaving too many clients in the lurch.
I've had a good dig around and looks like our MKH416 with a Mic Port Pro will give reasonable quality - but how to record? We've an IBM thinkpad laptop but it's just too noisy.
Can you recommend a laptop or similar that is near silent? What are you guys doing?
Realise this topic is well worn, so thanks in advance. |
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dwpthe3rd
Contributore Level V
Joined: 28 Feb 2010
Posts: 198
Location: Where palm trees meet pines
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 11:11 am Post subject: Re: Quiet laptop or similar for the road |
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| Dayo wrote: | Hi all
Well I swore I'd never do this, but we've both been working our tails off here and badly need a week or two in the sun, so.... (deep breath).... I'm putting together a first time portable recording rig so me and the missus can grab some much needed r'n'r without leaving too many clients in the lurch.
I've had a good dig around and looks like our MKH416 with a Mic Port Pro will give reasonable quality - but how to record? We've an IBM thinkpad laptop but it's just too noisy.
Can you recommend a laptop or similar that is near silent? What are you guys doing?
Realise this topic is well worn, so thanks in advance. |
Toshiba Satellite here, with USBPre interface. Such minimal environmental noise (fans, etc) that I can place a condenser mic just a couple feet away and not pick up any noise, in addition to a lack of electronic noise.
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Mike Sommer
A Hundred Dozen
Joined: 05 May 2008
Posts: 1222
Location: Boss Angeles
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 11:39 am Post subject: |
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I'm not a windows guy, but a friend of mine got the Sony Vaio, and loves it. It's also very quiet.
The only real quite laptop is the Macbook pro. And yes you can boot up in Windows. I installed Window 7 on Marc Cashman's iMac via "Bootcamp" and it's working great.
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Claire Dodin
Club 300
Joined: 15 Feb 2008
Posts: 392
Location: Sunny LA
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 12:46 pm Post subject: |
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I've had my Vaio vpccw21fx for a bit over a month and so far it's really quiet.
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brianforrester
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Joined: 30 Jul 2005
Posts: 492
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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I know they don't yet have the brand recognition of Lenovo (IBM), Dell or Toshiba (getting there, but not quite), but I have an Acer Aspire 5810T and it is by far the most quite notebook I've ever owned. I think that you can still special order it with WinXP, but I might be wrong.
It has tonnes of power, loads of battery life, great screen size, is super thin and light and even has a full number pad on the keyboard. Between my day job and home I have 6 Acer laptops and 2 monitors and I have been nothing but satisfied. The notebook literally emits less noise than the air flow from the forced air heating in my edit suite in my studio (not my recording environment).
After purchasing this bad boy almost a year ago, I don't think I'll even consider another laptop manufacturer for the simple reason that Acer has what I need at very reasonable prices... No I don't get paid, I'm just a satisfied customer 
Check out this link
AspireŽ 5810 Timeline
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SkinnyJohnny
Backstage Pass
Joined: 12 Aug 2007
Posts: 462
Location: Asheville, NC
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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No noise from my Macbook Pro!
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:36 am Post subject: |
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Thanks everyone! There's a Acer Aspire 5810T on ebay right now that looks tempting....
Hmmmm |
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melissa eX
MMD
Joined: 20 Oct 2007
Posts: 2794
Location: Lower Manhattan, New Amsterdam, the original NYC
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| Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The only real quite laptop is the Macbook pro. |
Not quite true. I have a Dell Latitude - which I bought refurbished with a Solid State hard drive - no fans in those drives. It's dead silent. Since it's refurbished it was more than 30% less expensive than new. Since it was purchased from the Dell Small Business outlet it came with all of the warranties and options for upgraded warranties - just like new. It's not a huge hard drive - 128G but who needs more than that for a travel machine? |
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georgethetech
The Gates of Troy
Joined: 18 Mar 2007
Posts: 1878
Location: Topanga, CA
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| Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Y'all wrong!
The Dell Mini 10 is the truly silent model. Get it with solid state disk and it has absolutely no moving parts. All Dell Mini's are completely fanless, so even with a standard spinning drive they are incredibly quiet.
My Macbook Pro is far from silent.
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 7:10 am Post subject: |
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| Do you think a netbook like the Dell mini has enough juice to do what we need? |
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captain54
Lucky 700
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 744
Location: chicago
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| Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 9:03 am Post subject: |
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| Dayo wrote: | | Do you think a netbook like the Dell mini has enough juice to do what we need? |
I have a Dell mini 10v, and did some tests with ProTools LE. Stock unit recording to system drive
Recording one mono track, about 1 minute in length, the CPU usage was at about 15%. Add some volume automation and a few edits and it jumped to near 20%. Add one EQ and one Compression plug in effect and it climbed over the 20% mark to almost 25%.
I tried installing the Microsoft Essentials security software and had to un install it, even with it running in the background because it took another 30% of the CPU.
I don't know if I would rely on this machine for more heavy lifting, but as a travel or auxiliary machine for recording one mono track, lite processing, editing and automation...it should be ok... |
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 5:18 am Post subject: |
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| captain54 wrote: | | Dayo wrote: | | Do you think a netbook like the Dell mini has enough juice to do what we need? |
I have a Dell mini 10v, and did some tests with ProTools LE. Stock unit recording to system drive
Recording one mono track, about 1 minute in length, the CPU usage was at about 15%. Add some volume automation and a few edits and it jumped to near 20%. Add one EQ and one Compression plug in effect and it climbed over the 20% mark to almost 25%.
I tried installing the Microsoft Essentials security software and had to un install it, even with it running in the background because it took another 30% of the CPU.
I don't know if I would rely on this machine for more heavy lifting, but as a travel or auxiliary machine for recording one mono track, lite processing, editing and automation...it should be ok... |
Thanks for that. Will have a look at thatDell model too.
So how does everyone cope with printing copy? On the road, do you read off your laptop screen? Whats your modus operandi? |
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Bish
3.5 kHz
Joined: 22 Nov 2009
Posts: 3738
Location: Lost in the cultural wasteland of Long Island
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| Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 6:39 am Post subject: |
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... and the other good thing about the Mini 10v is that it's the best little netbook out there if you want to run the "alternative" operating system.
Hackintosh anyone?
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 7:39 am Post subject: |
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Plunge taken. Ordered a Dell Mini 10 with standard drive and a Kindle book reader from Amazon to read the copy from. Thanks for all your help everyone.
Let you know how it goes... |
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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| Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 8:22 am Post subject: |
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| The Dell Mini 10 arrived and it's super quiet! Very pleased |
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