Karaoke Forums

In the market for a new laptop

1) What is the most important citeria when buying a SHOW ONLY laptop
Processor Speed ?  / Cache?
Ram/Memory ?
hard drive speed??  5200 vs 7200 ?


2) Todays laptops can be purchased with improved built in SOUND cards
With these is an external sound card really needed anymore?

Most laptops now are more than adequate for running shows I am presently typing on a Compaq  Presario V5115US I have it totally loaded with crap. Yet I have used it several times at shows and it never balked or had hiccups. I have replaced at least 3 cd players at shows and the audio quality was immediately noticed by the crowd . A cd player esp in a smoking bar needs the optics cleaned on a regular basis or the sound gradually deteriorates. As one who used to maintain cd jukeboxes I know.

See the thread on Laptop Restore (I did write it while sober and serious). I would like a 17" wide screen instead of a  15".. I was one of those that shunned laptops for years. Now I am considering lappies only. I forget the specs on this one but go to the HP site. Memory at least half a gig but the most important criteria is HDD capacity and speed (5200 works).

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There is no most important. You need all things in the sufficient degree.

 * Getting more than 2G of memory  (1G with Windows XP) is not required.
 * The more hard drive space the better, of course, but 160MB gives you 22,000 songs or more, which should be enough for almost anyone.
 * You need a second video connector, usually SVideo.
 * The processor doesn't need to be the fastest, but needs to be relatively modern.
 * You need some USB ports for various things.

Almost any modern notebook laptop (not  sub-notebook) should do the job. Just about all have and SVideo out and a sound card.

We run our show on Dell Inspiron 1520 laptops. The onboard sound chip is fine, and it sounds a heck of a lot better than the CD-based shows I went to over the weekend.

P.S. I can't believe how bad the sound is some places. Do the people have no ears? I watched one set up, and at no point did they go to the FOH area to check the mix. It was terrible, and we left.

Your opinion is I should not  spend the extra $100-$300 for the top of the line Pentium Duo Core processor and something like  this will do:

Intel® Pentium(R) Dual Core™ T2330 (1.60GHz/533Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
versus
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5450 (1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)

$300 differance

Again --this is just to host DJ/KJ functions -- Both exceed the minimum and reccomended specs of the hosting software.

I'm looking at a laptop with a 320gb harddrive  versus using an external.

mckyj57 Are 2.5 "  IDE limited to 120GB? I might have to get a lappie with SATA...

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For good reason. I run MTU Hoster and Compuhost on lesser processors, with no problem.


That's a lot of music, but I guess it is nice to have room for growth. I got 160G for both ours, and even on our club collection of 9500 unique songs and 2200 DJ songs, we have 50G free...

It makes sense (to me) to have two machines available in case of problems with one. Not that I have ever had such problems, but then again I am only veteran of about 50 shows with a laptop.

If I lose my new Dell, I can go back to my old Toshiba with MTU Hoster on it. It doesn't have all the latest songs I have bought (no room) but it would do in a pinch. Now that I think about it, though, I could put Compuhost on it and use an external drive. (Not that I expect to ever have to do it.)

Good video and sound cards.   7200 is better than 5200

Processors and memory are only going to get bigger.  New programs and operating systems will be based on the bigger faster hardware.

Make sure it has the extended desktop capability.

Duel core means for all purposes 2 processors.    More computing power at one time.   More tasks can be performed.    Lots of memory is never a bad thing.

I prefer an external hard drive for the music.

To be honest, I don't know. I just bought the drive that came with the Dell. If I had put Linux on it, I could have told you whether it was SATA or not, but with Windows I don't pay much attention.

Doesn't really matter though -- there is no sigificant price or reliability difference between the two in a laptop application.

2.5 drives are now 500 gig.. No worries, mate..

IDE or SATA?

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Might want to check your office depot ad.  I saw a Toshiba laptop advertised for $399 after rebates in this Sunday's Paper.  Its in-store only, so you can't get it on-line.

Here's the specs:

Model #A205-S5803
Office Depot PN# 486515

Intel dual-core processor T2330
1 GB DDR2 Memory
120GB HD
Dual-Layer DVD/CD Writer
802.11b/g Wireless Lan

In-store price was $579 -  $180 in rebates = $399.

Looks like it has 2 usb ports, but I could not find out if there was an open memory slot for expansion.  It is loaded with Vista, though.

If I hadn't just picked up a Dell desktop for $349, I'd be all over this.

SATA
http://www.macworld.com/article/131372/ ... tachi.html

In my experience, karaoke does not take processor speed. I run my shows on my back-up PIII without a problem. I actually tested originally on an old Pentium 100, which worked just fine. Extra ram doesn't hurt, but it's not really nessesary. Get the biggest hard drive, or run a big external. You'll never have enough storage space. A good quality video card with decent ram helps. I would opt for an external sound card, because I don't feel that the space limitations in a laptop allow for a good quality sound card. Oh, if you plan to run videos, then get the faster hard drive.

What ^^ said..

My Toshiba Celeron Laptop works just fine.. 1 gig ram, 2.8 mhz, external 500 gig USB drive.

be careful on OLDER pcs with external drives...

USB speed on older is usually 1.1, and you WILL get some lag on that if you're going to have a lot of access to the external drive (i.e. searching for other songs, enqueuing them, etc.) .

Merely playing the songs one by one though, you SHOULD be okay with the older technology. Just try not to use a "hoster" type of program with that!

I bought the best sound card that Dell had and my laptop sounds just fine.

Well I went and did it  8)
Ordered a new Dell Inspiron 1420 - Intel Core Duo T5450 ( 1.66Ghz/667MhzFSB/2mb Cache)

2GB - Memory
128MB - GeForce Video Card
320 GB - Internal HD
Sound Blaster  Xtreme Audio Sound Card
Only has a 14.1" display  but I thought that was good enough.

Hopefeully this will handle all my Karaoke and DJ needs without the use of an external HD and or USB External Sound Card, ( I believe the sound card I ordered is a plug in module).

You're going to be sorry on that 14" display, big mistake IMO. My laptop has a 15" and it's barely adequate, text is quite small and hard to read. My next laptop for Karaoke hosting will be a 17". All the other specs look fine.

Don't think you don't need an external HD. If that computer or HD or windows takes a dump you are going to be in big trouble. Get an external HD just for back up alone even if you plan to run off the internal drive.

Stogie

I hear you with regards to the smaller display- I'm hoping it won't be a problem for me (I'm already wearing reading glasses    :D )

This will actually be my 2nd laptop  - so this will be my show and my current one will become my back up.  All my music (mp3 and mp3+g zipped) are backed up on external drives in the event of any  crashes ( like I  had on New Years Eve 2006)
There's a post in the archives about that nightmare night.

running the audio from a laptop to mixer - Currently my laptop with an external giga port I can run RCA to 1/4" and plug into a channerl on my mixer.

My new laptop will use a card with a 1/8" mini plug ?

Do they have adpaters to 1/4" for this or will I need to use teh the mini to RCA adapter and run into the CD IN on my mixer ?  

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