Buying a new notebook as editing system(need hardware tipps)

[Willen]

Some of the specs you ask for, like two harddrives, just is not going to happen in a laptop. Be it Apple or anything else.

Some 17" and 18.4" desktop replacement notebooks (which really stretch the term) can be equipped with dual hard drives, usually in a RAID 0 (striped) configuration. As such, they can be re-formatted as RAID 1 (mirrored) for redundancy.

Dell offers dual HDD options in their Studio 17 and XPS M1730 series laptops and their Alienware division offers many models with that option (a few even offer the option of 3 drives!).

HP offers dual HDD options in their Pavilion HDX18t and dv7t series laptops.

Sony offers dual HDD options in their AW series laptops.

With the new 500GB 2.5" 4200 rpm drives these units can now rival many desktop configurations (500GB x2 = 1TB). Albeit with lower performance.

[Kionon]

Some 17" and 18.4" desktop replacement notebooks (which really stretch the term)

Yeah, if I can't balance it on my lap, it is not a laptop. Guess it is still a notebook, and therefore relevant to Bauzi's interest, but I needed portability over an excess of power, was willing to go down to a smaller screen for it, and my MacBook is quicker than my desktop. I think if he were to order a MacBook White, toss a 500GB harddrive into it and add 4GBs of ram, he would be surprised at how fast it goes. He could even add parallels or boot camp and run windows. I use parallels to run Adobe Premiere 6.5 side by side with my mac versions of photoshop, etc, because running the mac version in rosetta is actually slower.

All in all, it may not fit what he needs. Mileage may, and will, vary. However, I think dismissing MacBooks out of hand is silly.

[BasharOfTheAges]

You seem to want the power and performance of a desktop system in your laptop. Unless you're constantly traveling, you'd be better served by building a desktop system and buying a small netbook for on-the-go portability. It'd probably end up being cheaper too. When you go high-end and do lots of work you have no battery life and need to be tethered to a wall for your external HDDs anyways.

[Bauzi]

@Basher:
I won´t by a netbook for sure. It was somehow my original plan to replace my desktop system with a strong notebook, but it gets more and more unrealistic. This notebook will replace my desktop PC for some time, but it´s better to buy a 1000 bucks or less system afterwards if I really need it.

I trust Kmv when he says that I don´t need that much of power to have a good editing experience and I can also replace the 17" display when I just by a monitor for my home and plug it into my notebook.

So all in all my wish looks like this:
15"-17"
320GB - 500GB with 5400rpm
512MB Graphiccard with 1680 x 1050
4GB DDR2 RAM

wich will cost me around 1200 to 1400 bucks

I think dismissing MacBooks out of hand is silly.

It´s just that it really isn´t my cup of tea. I´m fine with Windows or Linux.
Apple has a certain image and the users have a certain feeling to have a Mac and to be part of the Apple community. I can´t indentify with it. Yeah I know that this is somehow silly now.

[the Black Monarch]

You will want:

Windows XP Professional (Home can't handle multi-core and Vista just plain sucks)
The fastest dual-core CPU available (XP Pro can only use 2 cores)
A high-resolution screen
DDR2-1066 or faster memory

Not much else matters. You probably won't be using more than 2GB of RAM, nor will you notice any improvements in speed past DDR2-1066. The video card is wholly irrelevant, as it's not where the rendering and encoding are done. You're using an external hard drive, so HD size is irrelevant. Just get that 3.33GHz Wolfdale and a big screen, and you're gold.

[Kariudo]

You will want:

Windows XP Professional (Home can't handle multi-core and Vista just plain sucks)
The fastest dual-core CPU available (XP Pro can only use 2 cores)
A high-resolution screen
DDR2-1066 or faster memory

Not much else matters. You probably won't be using more than 2GB of RAM, nor will you notice any improvements in speed past DDR2-1066. The video card is wholly irrelevant, as it's not where the rendering and encoding are done. You're using an external hard drive, so HD size is irrelevant. Just get that 3.33GHz Wolfdale and a big screen, and you're gold.

I would usually just ignore such a necropost, but when you spread bad information it really gets me going.

XP (any version) can support up to 32 cores* (personally, I have my Core2Quad running XP Pro).
However, Home can only use 1 physical cpu while Pro can use 2 physical cpus** (which is seen primarily on server mobos)

If you do extensive work in AE, 2 GB of ram can run out pretty quickly.

Internal HDD >> external HDD for editing (save for firewire 800 and esata externals, which should still give you enough throughput)

Seeing as rendering and encoding can easily load a processor, you'd want to stay away from integrated graphics (not to mention integrated graphics siphons some of your system ram) if you want to do something besides rendering/encoding while you wait.
You probably won't be playing crysis while rendering, and the gain you'll get from a dedicated card if you play something like solitare is negligable, but it isn't completely irrelevant.

*I get this number from the task manager of XP pro. When you choose processor affinity for a process you see 32 checkboxes.
**If you go according to Microsoft's licensing terms

[the Black Monarch]

XP (any version) can support up to 32 cores*

SRSLY?

Can we get some better sauce for this?

[the Black Monarch]

Internal HDD >> external HDD for editing (save for firewire 800 and esata externals, which should still give you enough throughput)

The author already said that he/she was using an external hard drive.

you'd want to stay away from integrated graphics (not to mention integrated graphics siphons some of your system ram) if you want to do something besides rendering/encoding while you wait.

Only if that something happens to be 3-D gaming... which is unlikely.

You probably won't be playing crysis while rendering

Yeah, exactly.

[Kariudo]

Quote:
you'd want to stay away from integrated graphics (not to mention integrated graphics siphons some of your system ram) if you want to do something besides rendering/encoding while you wait.


Only if that something happens to be 3-D gaming... which is unlikely.

and the gain you'll get from a dedicated card if you play something like solitare is negligable, but it isn't completely irrelevant.

Hurrah for prepositions?

SRSLY?

YA RLY
XP Pro running 4 cores (8 threads)
32 threads it is not, but 8 (per physical cpu) is the maximum for consumer-grade cpu solutions at this time

[the Black Monarch]

Fascinating.

Excuse me while I go somewhere to hang my head in shame.