Electronic Music 411 - Fujitsu Siemens Laptops

04/21/08 + packetst0rm

I'm thinking about getting myself a laptop so I can run windows side by side with my little mini mac. Get a little more power than it and use it to play out live in the future.

Does anyone have any opinions on Fujitsu Laptops?

Is this going to be good enough for making music?

link

I'm not going to be running a huge amount of plugin's I mostly use max/msp , the odd native instruments plug in ( using the demo of Massive at the momentl ) and ableton live.

Recent Blog: New Laptop as well!

04/21/08 + astroboy

i had an amilo-d, it worked pretty well but suddenly died after 2 years. i had it repaired but it died again some weeks later.
then i switched to mac.

now that was not very helpful. sorry.

Recent blogs: freaky drummer, Hoogie-Boogie Land, i made a short video

04/22/08 + packetst0rm

Well I know it might die after 2 years...for under 300 pounds 2 years of working is not bad in my eyes!

Recent blogs: Supercollider, iband - Music made with iphones and a ds!, Asus EeePC

04/22/08 + Jetsom

I have an Amilo M. I got it when my Mac decided it didn't like audio apps! It's souped up, still going, had it for four years ish. Remember reading somewhere that Jega used a Fujitsu Siemens for making music and was happy with it. I don't know much about computers though..sorry not much help.

Recent blogs: Hi. I'm Jetsom. I never blog.

04/22/08 + oxymoron

Not sure about the Celeron M processor in the laptop in the link. It could be sufficient for music apps, but check it.

That said, the Thinkpad T41 I bought refurbed in 2004 is still going strong. I had purchased it solely to use for business and bought other "music" computers in the interim (a Dell Insipron laptop, a Core2Duo Macbook, and a Core2Duo Mac mini). I keep going back to the Thinkpad though because it is so well built, it has a 1400x1050 14" screen and, even after four years, seems to run Live 7 and Reason 4 better than the Core2Duo Macs. Bizarre!

Recent blogs: If alva noto plays Toronto..., QuikLok QL-623 at Toronto Long & McQuade, Moog Little Phatty Tribute Edition is...

04/22/08 + quip

i used to swear by sony vaios. but my 5 year old vaio has just started playing up.
so i got a mac. but i really like the dell xps - would be my choice if i went to pc.

Recent blogs: bangface !, bline tutorial, moby with hair!

04/23/08 + korgborglar

thats cheap as hell, but personally i'd pass. the hdd will probably be a bottle neck if you're doing multitrack audio recording or streaming lots of samples of the disk, look for one with 7200 rpm. you can do better on the processor too, look for intel core 2 duo.

you can get a dell latitude for ~700$ that'll have a core 2 duo, fast hdd, etc

Recent blogs: child prodigy, damn you google, peter w. belt audio treatment

04/23/08 + korgborglar

btw if your laptop dies after 3 years the odds are it was overheating, laptops dont have room/power for tons of fans to keep everything cool so they overheat a lot. i killed a hard drive and a stick of ram by doing that... alot of reaserch later heres what i learned

put coretemp on your computer and have it run at startup, itll show you what the max temperature your cpu can run at is, along with your current cpu temp. if your cpu temp gets up to the max or over it, you're wearing your processor out a lot faster then you shuold be. mine was getting up to 101 degrees C, which is very not good.

always make sure air can flow through the bottom of your laptop, which means dont use your laptop on soft surfaces which will let the laptops rubber feet sink into them and block air. if you're using it on your lap, make sure the fan vents are uncovered. never use it on a pillow or a bed.

never have your laptop turned on in a laptop bag, heat builds up bigtime

clean out your cpu's heatsink every few months with a can of duster

relatively recent intel processors are very resistant to heat damage because they slow down dramatically or even shut off if it gets too hot, but amd processors will keep on running through the heat, even damaging

the best trick i found for lowering my cpu temp was undervolting it. there's no risk of damage, no loss of performance, you gain battery life, the program you do it with is free, and you can run ~10 degrees C cooler... heres a guide for that link

applying quality thermal paste (arctic silver 5) to your cpu will get you 2 or 3 degrees cooler... its only like 8$ for a tube that has enough for 10 or more applications, but on the downside it took me 5 tries to get it right. a laptop cooler will knock off ~ 5 degrees as well.

the moral of the story is run as cool as possible and your laptop will last a long time

Recent blogs: child prodigy, damn you google, peter w. belt audio treatment

04/26/08 + packetst0rm

I decided to go with a HP laptop in th end because I could get a meaty spec for ruffly the same price I was willing to pay. My missus get's a nice discount!

Recent blogs: Supercollider, iband - Music made with iphones and a ds!, Asus EeePC