Shopping for a new laptop...

Brandon Rice said:
What have you heard about Acer?
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I've had two Acers... I probably won't be getting another. Even after I wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of the OS and drivers, they always seem to be buggy and extremely crash prone when editing on them (both CS3 and CS4). Fine for surfing the internet, but not much more beyond that.
 
Look for the mislabeled Gateways.. Even at $650 they are a steal. I picked one up locally for $600... it's an i5 with 4gb ram and a 320gb HDD Blu-Ray drive with HDMI out.. pretty slick. I can edit native AVCHD using Edius Neo 2.5 booster, surf the net and it's pretty quick in photoshop too.
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=Gateway+NV5927u

It's the Gateway NV5927u. What happened is BestBuy contracted with Gateway to purchase thousands of the laptops with the i3 CPU for a sale price of $499 back on 1-30-2010. Well, intel were out of the i3 CPU's so Gateway purchased i5 CPUs instead. They didn't update the packaging so if you got a certain shipment of the special laptop you got the i5 for a very good deal. I love mine! Many folks snagged them up and are selling them at a small profit which is still cheaper than the cheapest i5 notebook!
Look around... you can find them for a sweet deal.
 
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now i always get the cheapest laptop i can find because it will probably be destroyed by the kids within the year, but if i were to upgrade i would likely get one with a core i3 or i5.
 
ugafan said:
now i always get the cheapest laptop i can find because it will probably be destroyed by the kids within the year, but if i were to upgrade i would likely get one with a core i3 or i5.
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I'm beginning to expect that the dirty little secret behind these inexpensive laptop brands isn't the chip at all. It's the motherboard. They never seem to list the motherboard information and that is one component that can really make or break a machine.
 
Well to be honest, if your planning to work at home and not use it for much traveling, I'd suggest in buying a desktop. For the price of a decent laptop, you could build (or buy) yourself a great desktop. Trust me, I regret getting an expensive laptop and am looking to save up for a new desktop.
 
Well I'm pretty thrilled. I went down to Best Buy and found a Gateway I really liked but it had neither Firewire nor a PCMCIA port so it was out of the question. With a salesguy's help we found a pretty kickin Sony VAIO with Firewire for $729. I was okay with that, but unfortunately it was out of stock, and all they had was one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...f06964c&itemid=370333260040&ff4=263602_263622

But it was an 'opened box' (returned), so they were selling it for $459.

It's sexy as helllllllllll, has nice stats, and a pretty little firewire port (and BLU RAY!).

Thanks for everyone's help, esp ATL. I wasn't comfortable buying from ebay but that was a nice tip.
 
honey said:
But it was an 'opened box' (returned), so they were selling it for $459.

It's sexy as helllllllllll, has nice stats, and a pretty little firewire port (and BLU RAY!).
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a sony vaio with a blu-ray drive and firewire port for $459? sounds like a steal!
 
honey said:
Well I'm pretty thrilled. I went down to Best Buy and found a Gateway I really liked but it had neither Firewire nor a PCMCIA port so it was out of the question. With a salesguy's help we found a pretty kickin Sony VAIO with Firewire for $729. I was okay with that, but unfortunately it was out of stock, and all they had was one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...f06964c&itemid=370333260040&ff4=263602_263622

But it was an 'opened box' (returned), so they were selling it for $459.

It's sexy as helllllllllll, has nice stats, and a pretty little firewire port (and BLU RAY!).

Thanks for everyone's help, esp ATL. I wasn't comfortable buying from ebay but that was a nice tip.
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Sweet deal! I didn't need firewire or a PCMCIA slot (all SDHC memory cards here) so it wasn't a big deal. I did want the faster i5 CPU and blu-ray so I went with the gateway I found. That sony is sweet tho.. Good deal man!
 
I tried looking at the boxx website. Submitted my email for a Price Range email.. error.

Can anyone tell me roughly the range of laptops they do?

I know I won't be able to afford it, but i like to leave my brain imagine!
 
My GoBoxx was pretty much top-of-the-line at the time of purchase, for +/- US$3400.00

If anyone wants to seriously evaluate Boxx machines I can PM you the name of my rep there.
 
ugafan said:
a sony vaio with a blu-ray drive and firewire port for $459? sounds like a steal!
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Oh man, yeah I'm pretty ecstatic. It has this new feature: if your computer's turned off and you just wanna get online real quick you can press a button that says 'web' and a browser will pop up instantly, no bootup required.

I could go on, but again thanks for your help everyone. ATL, yeah if it wasn't for the firewire issue the gateway would probably get my vote. This thing has massive right-brain appeal though, it's silvery-white with a chicklet keyboard and lots of neat little touches all over. Thanks guys!

One new feature I just discovered: dual-touch touchpad allows you to easily magnify webpages/pictures/etc. This is very nice for me as I tend to sit a few feet away from the lcd.
 
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Brandon Rice said:
Wow... that's... wow... a nice system I imagine ;)
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It's a GoBoxx W2500. At the time of purchase Boxx was the only vendor offering a 3GHz quad processor notebook machine...

Model Specifications:

Intel® Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad Processor with 1066/1333 MHz System Bus
Intel P965 + ICH8-R Chipset
17" WUXGA (1920x1200) with GlassView LCD
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 M 1GB
4GB 800MHz or 8GB DDR2 667MHz
3 x SATAII Ports Internal
1 x IEEE 1394 Port (Mini DC in Jack)
4 x USB 2.0 Ports
1 x CRT Port
1 x External DVI Port
1 x Kensington Lock Port
4 x Audio Jacks for Line-Out, Line-In, Microphone-In, and S/PDIF-Out
Built-In 7-IN-1 Flash Memory Reader
(MMC/RSMMC/MS/MS Pro/MS DUO/SD/Mini-SD)
Integrated Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5300AGN 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN
Integrated Bluetooth Ver2.0
Built-in 2.0M Digital Video Camera
Built-in 56K V90 Fax/Modem
10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
15.48"(W) x 11.75"(D) x 2"(H) 11.8 lbs with Battery
dot_clear.gif



Configuration as Built:

Base Builds
W2500-0-XX Quadro FX
Operating System
Windows XP Professional Edition with SP3
CPU
Intel® Core 2 Quad Processor Q9650 (3GHz) (R)
Memory
4GB DDR2 800 (2 SODIMMS)
Hard Drives
160GB 7,200rpm SATA Drive (2.5) (SUB)
Laptop Parts
D901C - 8X DVD Multi Drive Prostar (R)


Come the next feature I'll probably stuff another 4GB of RAM in there. I kind of cheeped out on memory when I had it built.
 
AVCHD / MACBOOK PRO Premiere issues.

AVCHD / MACBOOK PRO Premiere issues.

HMC150 AVCHD Editing in Premiere CS4
I'm a 1st time poster, and am hoping the input I'm able to receive is able to help me move forward here.

I just recently acquired a new MACBOOK PRO w/ the following specs:

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
OSX 10.6.2 Snow Leopard
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Graphics: (looks like there are two cards?):

NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT (vRAM 512) & NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (vRAM 256)

My main purpose in upgrading was to be able to do NLE in the field, but as I'm learning, that may not be the case.

Though I've been using FCP for years on a MUCH slower G4 system, I've now purchased the CS4 Premium Production Package, and am attempting to familiarize myself with Premiere Pro.

I shot an hour of test footage with a PANASONIC HMC150, and loaded the card's files into a desktop folder. I've been able to view the clips in the media manager, and drop them into a timeline, but EVERYTHING IS SO SLOW!!!--even 1 at a time.

I can preview the files with relative ease, but when I start attempting any in/out points, and especially when I try to drag them into my timeline, I get the beachball from hell. And then there's the rendering time, just to normalize (uncompress I assume) the clip. 6 mins of footage the other night took 10 HOURS!!! ...and then Premiere crashed! Nice.

Everything gone.

It crashes and hangs up all the time. For all intensive purposes, it's useless right now.

Soooo...I understand that the monstrous amount of compression needed for AVCHD presents quite a strain on all-but-the most powerful systems. That being said, my MBP is no snail.

Please offer some advice on what I need to do to MAC-simize my system here. Is my graphic card just not up to snuff? Are their settings w/in the MAC or w/in Premiere that could help me out? Also, I read about people converting AVCHD footage to a more-manageable filetype, and still being able to convert it at full quality.

Please...I'm really hoping that my new $2,300 system is not too weak for AVCHD.

I'm about to test some older SD footage to see if Premiere remains unstable, but REALLY look forward to any help you all might be able to offer.

Thanks, in advance!
 
openalias said:
I'm a 1st time poster, and am hoping the input I'm able to receive is able to help me move forward here.
Click to expand...

Alas I am strictly PC and can't tell you anything useful.

Except that the expression is For all intents and purposes, not For all intensive purposes.
Brandon Rice said:
whew wow
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Hardware overload, Brandon?
 
openalias said:
Please offer some advice on what I need to do to MAC-simize my system here. Is my graphic card just not up to snuff? Are their settings w/in the MAC or w/in Premiere that could help me out? Also, I read about people converting AVCHD footage to a more-manageable filetype, and still being able to convert it at full quality.

Please...I'm really hoping that my new $2,300 system is not too weak for AVCHD.

I'm about to test some older SD footage to see if Premiere remains unstable, but REALLY look forward to any help you all might be able to offer.

Thanks, in advance!
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Convert it to a friendlier codec. AVCHD is long gop (compressed over several frames) so what you want is an I-frame codec (compression limited to single frames). Pro Res is great. DVCPRO HD will do too. I edit 1920x1080 ProRes on my macmini which is less powerful than your system and it works great. Also, make sure you're streaming off a FW800 drive that spins at least 7200rpm.
 
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