Laptop for video editing

[R. Hewitt]

Your best and safest bet is to consult the Adobe specs pages below rather than shell out and find something’s not quite compatible. Avid are very picky over what laptops they specify and require quite high end kit but lower spec machines do work. I’ve had no problem running Prem Pro on a DELL DL500 laptop but it’s much better on a wide aspect ratio screen.

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs.html

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/dvhdwrdb.html

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/6cards.html

[Blast]

If you will do a post search on “laptops”, quite a bit comes up on several posts in the past.
Short version, get all you can afford, cpu ram, and vid card.

Blast

ProStar 5614 Laptop
P4 Northwood 3.2 800FSB.
1 gig 3200 DDR SDRAM
2 7200 rpm,60 gig HDD
1 250 Diamond Max HDD
Teac -R-RW burner
Sony DRU-510A -R/ R burner
ATI 9600 MPRO 128 meg.
17″ AUX. monitor
13″ NTSC monitor
DV break-out
Bella keyboard

[Brian Deviteri]

I use a Dell Inspiron 8600 with a Pentium-M (Centrino) 2.0ghz processor, running Windows XP Pro with SP2, 1.0GB of RAM, 60gb 7200rpm HD, ATI 128mb 9600 Mobility Radeon Pro Turbo graphics at 1680×1050 (widescreen) resolution. I have Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1, with Encore DVD 1.5, Audition 1.5 and a lot of my other “multimedia tools”. I use external Maxtor 250gb USB 2.0/firewire HDs when I edit. I also have an ADS Tech PYRO AV Link for my realtime preview out to a monitor and analog-to-digital conversions.

Setup works great, nice and mobile for my clients. I would recommend getting as much RAM as possible and you need a 7200rpm HD. If you are willing to spend a little more on a screen, get widescreen, gives you a lot more real estate on your desktop and for all your applications. I would suggest beefing up your graphics to support the step up from 1680×1050 so you can watch true 1080 HD on your screen without resizing at all.

Just to note, I’ve heard rumors of a dual processor centrino laptops coming out early next year… I don’t know if that will change your decision at all, but I thought I’d share.

[Grant]

I have had a dell 9300 inspirion for a few weeks now. I am very impressed with the performance.
It runs very fast.
It runs for hours on a battery & the 17 inch screen has come in much handier than I would have expected. I initially intended to use dual screen most of the time but have found myself not bothering to connect up the second monitor.
The graphics card makes a big difference with 3 d transitions & effects in boris etc.

Specs

2gig centrino 533bus
1gig ram 533
6800 geforce PCI express graphics
7200 rpm system drive
7200rpm external firewire drive (connected into firewire port on laptop)
vx2000 camera (connected through PCIMA card)

If you want a laptop that runs cool & fast &b long this is the one.
I am sure you may be able to get a more powerful P4 laptop but be warned they will not last very long on a battery.

Also Alieen ware have some killer laptops with some very big batteries.

[Aanarav Sareen]

[Grant] “I have had a dell 9300 inspirion for a few weeks now. I am very impressed with the performance. “

Use the 9300 myself. Blazing fast 😀

[Mike Wolfe]

i have an alienware area 51 5620. it has been a really kicking system for the better part of 3 years, however, it tends to run extremely hot, and customer service was never helpful in addressing this issue. i think it’s finally melted something inside beyond repair…considering that you aren’t hardcore on your editing, though, i’m not so sure a $3000 laptop is in your future.