$700 for a computer...

Hawk Teflon

Hawk Teflon

Veteran
My friend is not a video editor, nor a cinematographer. He's a youth pastor. He's looking to buy a new laptop to edit quick videos for sermon intros. Nothing complex. No greenscreening. No compositing. No After Effects, Maya, 3d Studio Max or the likes. He's just looking for a laptop (around $700) that will edit some videos that he and the youth have shot. He's looking PC, and it's been a few years since I've used one (almost 5 for me). I don't even know what to look for. Will basically any laptop do this nowadays? I would imagine so, but I didn't know what to look out for. Any help that I could pass along to him would be greatly appreciated. Please remember, this does NOT need to be a render horse. They won't be shooting on a RED.
 
get something with the best processor and most ram you can find in that price range.

edit: just a quick look on best buy and i saw this toshiba. i don't have one of these so i can't speak from personal experience, but it looks pretty good for your budget. the fact that it comes with a 12 cell battery and 500gb hard drive is a plus.

laptop
review
 
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If it doesn't have a firewire port -- and most don't -- then make sure it has some sort of card port -- ExpressCard or PCMCIA. Otherwise, you have no way to get the video from camera to PC, unless the camera shoots on an SDHC card or something similar. Or uses a USB connection to transfer video from an internal hard drive.
 
I got the HP G60-445DX and I love it!

http://www.amazon.com/HP-G60-445DX-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1260938307&sr=8-1

I put Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c on it, and I'm editing HD from my Panasonic HMC40 without even converting to an intermediary format first. BUT this laptop doesn't have any kind of card slot or firewire port. I can pop the SDHC card from the HMC40 straight into the laptop and transfer the files with ease. But I have no way of getting video from my Panny DVX100a (miniDV) camera onto the laptop. I have to capture it using my desktop PC, put it on an external hard drive, then attach that external drive to the laptop. More aggravating.

Still, I love this laptop!
 
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