Mista_Ed Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 Ayo! My current laptop (ASPIRE V 15 - V3-572G-79zs) is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.....and its really making my life difficult - i just want rid of it. sooo, I'm after a new one! I'm not at all fond of laptops in general, but i simply don't have the space for a tower here, and its also not practical for what i actually need it for, so I'm kinda stuck with getting another one (ffs) I basically need / don't need the following: be as quick as humanly fucking possible - able to run pretty demanding programs (cubase and photoshop in particular)I'm not PC gamer...and im unlikely to start being one, so don't really need a top / gaming graphics card, 1TB storage is prob enough, but maybe useful for extra i guess, decent battery life (will mostly use it plugged in) also doesn't matter if its heavy / bulky....i'm really concerned with top performance, over anything else. Ive been out of the game in terms of anything computer related for ages - back in the UK when i had the studio, we used to have a computer company, based in the same building - he was my go to for advice and recommends - and built every studio PC we had (including all our own home ones actually), but that was over 10 years ago, and things have most certainly moved on........and i also live in another country entirely.......so i have no idea whats what anymore!! I'e been looking at reviews of shit online, but i find PC reviews to be often disingenuous somehow - on paper specs vs real life performance seem to be entirely different things....my current PC has "ok specs" (or did at the time) but it performs like a meandering tortoise on tramadol.....its slow as fuck and it thinks about the simplest of tasks for such an infuriating length of time...i'm actually sick to death of it... any ideas or recommendations anyone might have, would be welcome considerations!! has to be PC btw - I cant hack the Mac!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBearOne8III Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 i've been rocking dell's for years. currently i have a 17 inch dell lattitude.....or is it an inspiron, dosent really matter once you plug in the specs you want. intel i5 processor. 8GB on the ram and 1TB hard drive. it also has a dvd rw drive, which is hard to get on laptops these days. most of them have no optical drive at all. I dont remember which model number it is. I've had it for about 2 years now and it was on a back to school sale then. I haven't had any problems with it so far. at first i was using it to finish school, so mostly the internet, MS office and MS project. now i use it to run Traktor and pro tools first. oh yeah, i'm still on the regular hard drive. couldnt afford the solid state at the time. but i would recommend the solid state drives. hell, my old dell laptop still works great. needs a new battery though and more ram wouldnt hurt. my biggest issue with that one is that its still running vista so no new programs would work on it. but i've had that thing since '07 and she still runs like a champ. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jam Burglar Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 Similar experience as TearBear. The Dell XPS series laptop I bought a few years back has been rock solid (it's an XPS 13 but you can get larger ones). It's got the three things I like in a laptop: light, powerful, durable. All of these laptop companies have their issues, and Dell is no exception, but I've come to the conclusion that they're the best of the worst. My old Inspiron laptop from 2003 is still running believe it or not. The Sony I replaced it with died after 4 years, and was engineered to be completely unservicable. So, I went back to Del and I've been pretty happy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Rock Well Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 MacBook Pro. Stop being silly. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mista_Ed Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 sweet - cheers, ill have a look at XPS series properly then. first glance they seem quite expensive...which is prob a sign theyre solid tbh. mine was 1500 bucks...the xps 15 i7 is 4000, so its definitely going to be step up for sure....id be happy spending top dollar on something thats going to be good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dubba Dutchdj Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 I like what Schenker are doing with there audio edition laptops. Ray Arkaei (one of the writers from Dj Worx) was heavily involved in the design process so there laptops come preprepeared for pro music stuff - streamlining all the unwanted faff and settings disabled that can often cause some PC laptops to not perform well for pro music stuff. Mojaxx from dj city has recently done a couple of vids outlining his experience going from Mac to windows that are worth a peep I have zero experience of these Schenker machines but I do have a solid respect for Ray Arkaei and the POV of Mojaxx. https://bestware.com/en/schenker-audio-edition Last year I copped a used top spec 2015 MacBook Pro which in my mind seems to be the last generation of Apple comps worth looking at for pro audio stuff - haven't heard anything good about post 2016 macs and from a dj POV they've pretty much priced themselves out of the game. While Im very pleased with the my 2015 mac I probably would copped a brand new Schenker instead but hadn't heard of them until recent. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBearOne8III Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 dubb, i was just about to post the mojaxx switches to windows video. good find 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dubba Dutchdj Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 dubb, i was just about to post the mojaxx switches to windows video. good find Considering the current state of play with Mac's from a dj POV these Schenker machines have come along at a perfect time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steelio Posted May 12, 2019 Share Posted May 12, 2019 7th gen i5 or better, 8gb DDR4 RAM or better, SSD. I doubt you need hyperthreading, I doubt you need anything but on board GFX (GFX cards can induce DPC latency events). You probably do want 4 cores or better, especially if you use lots of vsts. You probably want to dump extra cash into buying a good audio device if you don't already have one, as that will minimise latency and buffer underruns. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottie(the)goonie Posted May 13, 2019 Share Posted May 13, 2019 Even though you don't intend to game, "gaming laptops" are usually built with performance in mind. Heat is the TRUE bottleneck of ALL laptops these days. 8th gen i7 processors are fast, SSD's are fast, memory is gracious. None of that matters once your PC throttles you at 80C. I edit video and game on a beast of PC. The one thing that will never get better is how windows handles audio latency. It's a consequence of different hardware and drivers interacting.If audio is your primary concern, I would go Macbook Pro. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djdiggla Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 MacBook Pro. Stop being silly. Likewise, I have a MacBook Pro. I absolute love Dell's Precision workstations--usually can gleam one that's a couple years old off our IT guy for very cheap. That said, I spent about a year of my life fucking with a PC driver/chip spec/soundcard issue and will never again use a PC to do music. I don't have the time for that bullshit and it negates any fiscal savings from a PC over a mac. The only benefit I see with a PC is gaming and more software options. And USB. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iexist Posted May 16, 2019 Share Posted May 16, 2019 i tried to go with a 2017 Dell, it could NOT handle Serato at all.. I returned it immediately and ended up with a 2013 Macbook Pro, same price (< 600) and works flawlessly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBearOne8III Posted May 17, 2019 Share Posted May 17, 2019 i tried to go with a 2017 Dell, it could NOT handle Serato at all.. I returned it immediately and ended up with a 2013 Macbook Pro, same price (< 600) and works flawlessly. im curious. did you order your dell or did you buy it off the shelf? i always ordered mine from dell. my current dell is either 2017 or 2018. I'm running traktor with no issues. i also run pro tools first with no issues. not knocking macbooks. i wanted a macbook when i first started getting laptops back in '07 but that price. and apple wouldnt give me credit at the time so i went with dell for almost half the price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mista_Ed Posted May 19, 2019 Author Share Posted May 19, 2019 thanks for the all additional input... its dont necessarily want to get an out and out audio computer either....but i DO want to use it for that as well.... i produce music on cubase, so it really has to be windows, coupled with all the win vsts that i use etc, im unsure whether mac has those available - that, and the work flow im used to is just so different on mac... cheers guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steelio Posted May 19, 2019 Share Posted May 19, 2019 The one thing that will never get better is how windows handles audio latency. It's a consequence of different hardware and drivers interacting. If you use ASIO drivers they bypass most of the Windows kernel and stream directly to the 'hardware' interface. If you have a decent audio interface, the latency wouldn't be noticeably worse just 'because its Windows'. Most latency measurements I've seen (and I've seen my share) don't show any real difference between MacOS and Windows (using ASIO drivers) when using the same audio device. On Macbooks (ime) the graphical redraw performance is significantly worse than on Windows machines. Meaning more general CPU load and increased spikes in CPU usage when lots of redrawing is occurring (for example when lots of audio meters are firing on channel strips), which can cause audio glitching as a consequence. So generally I associate poorer performance with Macbooks, all else being equal. Everything about the Macbook hardware is much better quality than the equivalent hardware from manufacturers who are bundling Windows with their laptops, though. Apart from the lack of any upgradeability on the recent MB models, that kinda sucks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djdiggla Posted May 21, 2019 Share Posted May 21, 2019 i tried to go with a 2017 Dell, it could NOT handle Serato at all.. I returned it immediately and ended up with a 2013 Macbook Pro, same price (< 600) and works flawlessly. im curious. did you order your dell or did you buy it off the shelf? i always ordered mine from dell. my current dell is either 2017 or 2018. I'm running traktor with no issues. i also run pro tools first with no issues. not knocking macbooks. i wanted a macbook when i first started getting laptops back in '07 but that price. and apple wouldnt give me credit at the time so i went with dell for almost half the price. Ordering is definitely better. Their top of the line systems smoke Macs but the mid tier IMO it's safer to go with a Mac. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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