What resources should I look for in a Windows machine for recording and video?

greenie44

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Hi all -

I may be getting a laptop soon to dedicate to ukulele recording, audio and video. For audio, I use Audacity and ProTools SE. For video, Cyberlink PowerDirector (which I love).

I know I should look for a decent amount of memory (expandable up to 8 GBs), but what would you all recommend for a minimum processor? I'm not that up on hardware, so I see dual-core, quad core, i3, i5, i7, etc.

Also, is it worth is to invest in replacing the hard drive with SSD?

Not sure how to evaluate this stuff since this is a dedicated recording machine. And I don't mind a little slower to save money on the unit.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.
 
*walks in whistling a haunting tune*

Enter a time almost exactly one year ago. One would hope the OP has already bought a computer but others like myself may come along in the future to read. In the past I would have said any good gaming system will do and it still might but there might be gains in using some chips over others.

Being a gamer any laptop I ever looked at needed to be very expensive to compare with my home system. Having switched back over from AMD chips my last build being an Intel i5 which is great for gaming might be better for processing music and video if it were an i7. The i7 multithreads where the i5 doesn't from how I understand it. Of course the big AMD chip might be a powerhouse for editing I do not know. I would ask questions at gaming sites usually there are a few computer wiz guys trying to help out.

So much is also advanced with tablets and the connectors to them that I cant even try to mention them beyond recognizing they exist as a music making option for many. This is also likely a much cheaper option than a laptop or home setup and extremly portable.

YES to the SSD good god YES! My two year old home system still boots up win 7 64 in under 25 seconds. Its slowed down a bit it used to be around 10-15 seconds to a fully booted usable windows system.
 
An audio interface, if you don't have one. For Windows, I always recommend buying an interface that plays well with the CPU you have (i.e. USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt chipset is compatible with the interface. Sometimes that will be listed on the manufactures website...sometimes not! If you want to know for sure look on the manufactures forum or better, yet, manufactures' tech support.) Decent microphones are nice, too. A good DI box if you have a pickup in your ukes.

Maybe a GoPro?
 
Ah, the thread lives again. What I actually did was - nothing!

For a couple of reasons. I dithered about this for a while and ended up getting a job where they gave me a new laptop, with SSD. It's peppier, but it is pretty much the same experience as with my older machine.

The older machine was where I was having problems with ProTools. A friend of mine who had ProTools with SSD told me the periodic errors I was getting were the same as he was getting, so it seemed like SSD was not the answer. I cleaned up my disk and reorganized it, and I guess I have just gotten used to periodic rebooting of the machine when the errors happen. Just adjusted my working method, and it doesn't bother me any more.

So entropy triumphs again!
 
While Pro Tools is certainly the industry standard, I have found Reaper easier to use, more capable, significantly less taxing on the hardware and more importantly it only costs $40. I have some projects with over 100 tracks (most with plugins), and still work with them on a single core processor running XP.
 
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