Karaoke Forums

I am ready to purchase a laptop for my karaoke business. I have just over 3000 songs on CDG's with plans of adding approximately 200-400 per year. I plan on getting compuhost software. I am asking for advice on the following:

1.) How much RAM do I need?
2.) How big should the hard drive be?
3.) How fast should the processor be and is one brand better than others?
4.) Is a bigger display better?
5.) What is a music/internet card?
6.) What is a video card?
7.) Is there anything else I should know that I haven't asked?

Any advice to any or all of these questions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you ,
Dave

If you are buying a new laptop with Windows Vista or 7, I would hope to have 3GB of memory, perhaps more. It's crazy that we need that much RAM to function these days.


Big enough to hold all your karaoke and music tracks, which means you will not have to carry around an external hard drive. Most songs are substantially less than 10MB, karaoke or regular music files. If you have a 250GB drive and 200GB is free after space for the OS, applications, etc. then you have enough room for 20,000 files that are 10MB each. That's a pretty good number.


Pretty much any off-the-shelf laptop you purchase new should have plenty of CPU for running compuhost or another karaoke program, as well as several other programs at the same time. I wouldn't worry about Intel vs AMD vs whoever.


Do you want your laptop to be smaller and more portable, or have a larger screen? For me, I like larger screens and I don't mind carrying a 10 pound laptop; but when I traveled more for business and often carried two laptops with me through airports, I really wished one of them was one of those 4 pound Sonys.


I don't know what a "music/internet" card is. Maybe you mean a cellular Internet card, such as those that let you use Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. data plans from your laptop. These are handy if you want to get online in a place without free Wi-Fi, but usually the cards that are built-in to laptops require you use a certain data carrier. I had the option of including one of these devices in my laptop when I bought it, but I decided against it, because I already have the USB device, and I sometimes use it on my other laptop or even my home computer when the cable TV and Internet has gone out a few times.


A part inside the computer that has to do with the graphics. I wouldn't worry about it. Much like the CPU, any new laptop you buy today should have a good enough video card for your application.


You might want to get a professional audio interface, such as a Lexicon Alpha.

_________________
Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Try to get a machine with svideo out.. (or RCA)
so you can connect to a TV set.. and use dual desktop screens..