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[Jason Lucas]

Jason  Does your experience include any newer generation of windows 8 machines?  I know Windows 8 has been designed to take full advantage of touch but if it is not up to par yet then I may just go with a Mac and look into a tablet to vnc in? (in due time...)  From the reviews on laptops I have been reading, it seems people have been happy though?

I've gone to a couple of different shops like best buy and played around with a few of the laptops, as I tend to do now and then. I haven't been happy with any of the touchscreen windows 8 laptops that I've tried. I haven't tried them all, but the few that I have just weren't up to snuff, in my personal opinion. The laptops themselves were fine but the touchscreen wasn't nearly responsive enough for me. My smart phone was better than any of them.

[Nick Enright]

So my dell hard disk died and upon replacing it I am retiring the machine to the wife and I need a new work machine.

I have a very different viewpoint to the other folks around here. I use my laptop for 3D CAD/Engineering applications.

I'm aware you've soured on dell; however I purchased last year a Dell M6400 Workstation, and that's the difference. A Workstation class machine is a bit of a different beast. Admittedly I use this laptop for CAD, and the CS5 suite, so workstation class abilities are important for me. teh machine cost $450 on e-steal, with another 150 for w7x64pro, and another 50$ to push it to 12gig RAM, it is almost as fast as my Desktop i5GenII, (video/audio editing machine, 12gig, w/ 4 internal drives - one dedicated to swap/cache/tmp file use). RAM is huge with 64bit os, since now you can address more than 3gig. My laptop has a full on Quadro workstation card in it, while my desktop has a cheap Gforce 210 card in it. I only really notice a difference when I get into serious drive access uses, or straight up raytracing. (Laptop: C2D  2.93Ghz Desktop: Ci5 2.80Ghz) That's when the extra two cores really show their value.

In both cases they are dell machines, aside from the very particular driver installation order, these machines have been stable for 2 and 3/4 years, desktop and laptop respectively.

I don't know if I'll buy a new laptop ever again, the M6400 is stoopid fast for the money, and that's with a WD 7200rpm 250GB drive, sataI (maybe(II)). I know I can add another drive and go either fast RAID or safe RAID (0 or 1 I forget) or put a SSD in on bay 1 and a 500GB storage drive in on bay 2.

since I use software that is pretty exclusive to Windows this is a pretty bad ass combination, i often do design on the laptop, then cloud the files over to the desktop for rendering, and when I get going to master audio for a variety show, the desktop and the laptop are equivalent, since  that sort of work is much less taxing to the system then my other demands.

my reccommendation:

purchase a used Workstation Class Laptop, the M6400 is pretty cool, other than that there are several brands that have equivalent machines.

[Tommy Peel]

+1 on used, after buying my MacBook Pro used for $600 I'd have a hard time shelling out mor than twice that for a new one. I'll have to remember that about workstation laptops in case in need a Windows laptop in the future. My 2.53 C2D MacBook is plenty fast processor wise for most anything I've thrown at it.

About Win8 on tochscreens, the office I work in has a couple of Dell touchscreen desktops. These are older models that came with Vista(I think they were bought right before 7 came out); we've got Win7 on one and have upgraded the other to 8. I know the people who normally use the machines don't use the touchscreen and I've found it to be fairly responsive but unintuitive.

It should also be noted that depending on your networking situation you might have some trouble with networking different devices to a Win8 machine. For example our multifunction copier/printer/scanner uses Windows file sharing to place scanned files on the users computer. The problem with Windows 8 is that it uses a newer version of SMB than 7 and our copier isn't compatible with it. The only work around I could find was to setup a FTP share which means the computer needs a static IP so the scanner can find the computer.

In short unless you need a touchscreen laptop I'd recomend getting a used Win7 model or a Mac; you'll probably have much fewer headaches with 7 until they get the kinks ironed out of 8.

P.S. Sorry for the earlier topic swerve, my college major and day job is are IT related so I can get carried away sometimes.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Adam Shay]

In short unless you need a touchscreen laptop I'd recomend getting a used Win7 model or a Mac; you'll probably have much fewer headaches with 7 until they get the kinks ironed out of 8.

My main use of the touch screen would be for system control programs like Meyer Compass or Lake control, for building / adjusting eq curves (running alongside Smaart 7), or for programs like Yamaha Studiomanager for controlling consoles remotely (like adjusting mixes on stage during setup/soundcheck), and for programs like Sportssounds pro where there is a screen full of buttons for instant playback of audio files.  These are the programs that would be used the most on the machine, aside from checking email and occasional web browsing.  I will also be doing recording and editing of audio files, USUALLY only 2track sometimes long files (like a 1-2+ hour show file).  In many instances a few of the above-mentioned programs will be running at once.
If you were getting a computer to be used primarily for these jobs, would you skip the touch screen or go for it, at this point?

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

I would go touch screen, but I'd go for something with a proper Wacom or Ntrig active digitizer. Resistive touchscreens are annoying, and capacitative touchscreens lack the accuracy of a fine-tipped stylus.

Something like a Lenovo X200/201/220/230 Tablet would be perfect.

[Tommy Peel]

My main use of the touch screen would be for system control programs like Meyer Compass or Lake control, for building / adjusting eq curves (running alongside Smaart 7), or for programs like Yamaha Studiomanager for controlling consoles remotely (like adjusting mixes on stage during setup/soundcheck), and for programs like Sportssounds pro where there is a screen full of buttons for instant playback of audio files.  These are the programs that would be used the most on the machine, aside from checking email and occasional web browsing.  I will also be doing recording and editing of audio files, USUALLY only 2track sometimes long files (like a 1-2+ hour show file).  In many instances a few of the above-mentioned programs will be running at once.
If you were getting a computer to be used primarily for these jobs, would you skip the touch screen or go for it, at this point?

In that case the touchscreen might make a lot of sense. I would go to a store that has some new ones and try a few out; if any of the software you use can be run from a flashdrive you might that that with you to try out your software and see how well it works. I'm not very familiar with most of the software you mentioned(I run a small setup, 16-channel mixer and no system DSP) so I can't comment on how it works but someone else on here probably is. I was mainly warning you that there are some compatibility issues with Win8 and certain software/network situations.

Another tablet to look at is the Surface Pro; the main problem I see that you might have is the lack of an ethernet port. It does have USB 3.0 so it might be possible to use a USB 3.0 to gigabit ethernet adapter for Dante.

[Mac Kerr]

I would go touch screen, but I'd go for something with a proper Wacom or Ntrig active digitizer. Resistive touchscreens are annoying, and capacitative touchscreens lack the accuracy of a fine-tipped stylus.

Something like a Lenovo X200/201/220/230 Tablet would be perfect.

There are capacitive styli available. They work fine.

It is nice to have a touchscreen for those apps that are designed for it, but most are not. The Lake interface was designed for a touchscreen way before it was easy to get one. It was a real PITA on a laptop, but great on a touchscreen. Yamaha StageMix is designed for touchscreen, StudioManager is not. As I said, Lake is, Meyer Compass is not. XTA AudioCore is not, System Architect is not, etc.

While it obviously matters whether the computing device you use has a good touchscreen, it matters more if the software you will use is designed for it.

Mac

[Bob Leonard]

Adam,
I have seen a couple of companies replenish their laptops out of the Dell Touch Book line. I'm partial to Dell for a number of reasons, the number one reason being their service. Usually most people will carry the standard NBD service, however, 4hr 24/7 is available if you feel you need that level of service. The 15z is a really nice system and that would be my choice.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/touch-ultrabook-laptops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

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