Laptop recommedations

[Doug Broomfield]

Alan,

Here is some text from an earlier thread on this that you might find helpful:

You apparently have some good laptop/Premiere Pro 1.5 knowledge…I’m hoping you can drop some experience my way…What laptop/notebook are/were you using (with PP1.5)…What would you like to be using (with PP1.5)…What would you like to be using if you only had $3k to spend (and still using PP 1.5)…Hope that this doesn’t waste too much of your time…I appreciate your help.

Name: Aanarav Sareen
Date: Apr 22, 2006 at 8:54:38 am
Subject: Re: Aanarav…Your laptop?

I use the Dell Inspiron 9300 with Premiere Pro 2.0 (and same with Premiere Pro 1.5) The laptop barely cost me anything and it runs the entire Production Studio great. Also, it has a higher end graphics card, so if you plan on upgrading to Premiere Pro 2.0, you can use the GPU to speed up previews with certain effects.

However, Dell has now released the Inspiron 9400. It is a core duo notebook and VERY fast. I gave it a spin a few days ago and the difference was almost 40% faster.

Here are a few tips:
If you are looking to purchase a laptop, keep a look out at https://www.slickdeals.net. You can easily pick the 9400 for less than $1400. However, once you DO purchase it, select the lowest amount of RAM possible. Dell charges you around $400/GB. You can get 2gbs of RAM from https://www.newegg.com for a total of $200.

Let me know if you have any more questions…

Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com

Name: Peter Corbett
Date: Jul 30, 2006 at 2:24:34 pm
Subject: Re: Aanarav…Your laptop?

The top model 9400’s usually come with a 1900 x 1200 res screen. This extra real estate is really useful for Premiere.

[Blast1]

The core 2 duo laptops are starting hit the market with even more zap, most new laptops have express ports so you can use external SATA drives also some have two drives built in, SDI is another question all together there is supposed to be an express card developed soon.

[Alan Lacey]

Thanks syphrum I did see both of those posts. It’s getting the most out of the GPU that concerns me most I suppose. Do you know of a ‘recommended’ list for this?

What about PCIe on laptops?

I’m a Liquid and FCP editor and the last Prem I used was 6.5 but I’m planning this for a shared project with a few people who are reasonably Prem proficient.

[Alan Lacey]

Thanks Blast – nothing at the moment then. Hmmmm, any suggestions for the cheapest/smallest sdi enabled ‘SD capture only’ station that I could configure.

These two Prem projects will need to be transportable on external drives with a mobile (laptop) editor available. I was hoping to get away with a single system.

Alan

[Aanarav Sareen]

[Alan Lacey] “It’s getting the most out of the GPU that concerns me most I suppose.”

I don’t know if the GPU cards are going to help you as much. I have the nVidia 7800 card and the difference in render speed is barely noticable. However, it does work with certain effects such as cross-dissolve, motion and a few others.

Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com