The Perfect Laptop

B

Brian@202020

Veteran
I'm looking for the perfect laptop, and I'm looking for suggestions.


Must have features:

PC slot (for P2 cards)
Firewire 800 (for speed transfers to a raided external drive)
Small (12 inch preferred)
Dull screen (for using outside)

I've seen laptops with a PC slot and an Express Card slot. Can I use both at the same time? If so I could get a Firewire 800/Express Card adapter. Also I've heard rumors about the new Macbook Pro's being announced in a week. They are supposed to be Intel Core 2 duo, but what other changes will there be? Will there be a Firewire 800 port on the 15 inch? Or best of all is there going to be a new 12 inch with a Firewire 800 port?
 
Just wait till the 12th and see if the rumors are true, no word on any rumors about ports, but you never know, and yes, the Macbook Pro is as perfect as you will get in a laptop, EVER!
 
Mac = Express Card (hopefully soon to be fixed with adapter)
Mac = 15 inch or 17inch (17 inch only with firewire 800)

PC = PC slot
PC = firewire 800 (if just through adapter)
PC = 13.3 inch

It has nothing to do with the OS. If I got the Mac I would NOT put windows on it. It has to do with function and time managment. Like I said I am a Mac guy and I hope it works out.
 
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Neat! Same system here at my office, but with less Ram, didnt notice a difference between 2gb and 4 gb of ram.

to stay on topic, i dont think youll be able to get all 3 of the things you want, mainly the 12inch screen. Why not something like a P2 store, i can assure you that you wont find a Laptop with Firewire 800 that is not a Mac, i just have never seen a PC laptop that has it.
 
I tried the P2 store, and I hate it. it's kind of scary trusting that the footage is there and is not corrupt. I prefer to see the footage my self before I erase the card, even if it is only a few seconds of a clip. As for a laptop I found a 12 inch with an Express Card slot and a PC slot. If I can use both at the same time I could use a Firewire 800/Express Card adapter. The only problem with that one is the screen is shiny and could be hard to see outside.
 
I was all gung-ho on the Macbook Pro, but now I'm not so sure. PCs are more reliable at copying/ingesting cards, and while the MBP is both a PC and a Mac (if you buy and install WinXP on it), there's still no PCMCIA slot, and there's no FW800 on the 15" model, and it has the 6-pin firewire port which causes blown firewire ports on camcorders, and no SD card reader slot.

So it's good, but far from ideal.

I wish Sony would make a 12" version of this thing:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=VGNAR190G&Dept=computers&CategoryName=cpu_VAIONotebookComputers_AR_Series

It's got ExpressCard, and it's got PCMCIA, and it's got a 4-pin firewire port (no blown HVX firewire ports!), and it has an SD card slot for editing scene files, and it's got a blu-ray data drive for archiving card contents, and it's got a 1920x1200 screen for viewing high-def at full resolution, and it can run DVC Rack and EDIUS and P2 Viewer and TLorenzo's PC version of P2 Genie...

On the downside, it's massive and heavy and expensive. And it doesn't yet offer a Core 2 Duo processor, it's only a Core Duo.

The MBP is still singing a tempting siren song (and if they'd introduce a Core 2 Duo version and re-introduce the PCMCIA slot, I think I'd just plain get it). But man... that Sony AR190G running EDIUS and DVC Rack, and the ability to just plug in a card and copy it over (or edit right from the card), and the ability to author high-def DVDs and archive 50gb at a time if you so choose... plus it's got enough horsepower to serve as a desktop replacement, which might help justify the expense...

I think that if they'd add a Core 2 Duo to it, this might be the ultimate HVX companion laptop (if you can afford it!) And if you want to use FCP, just offload your cards to an external FAT32 hard disk and import them to your FCP-based desktop system (and the import will be more reliable anyway since the card copy was done on a PC).
 
Barry, please help and explain how the MBP and specifically a 6pin port is blowing the firewire on the HVX. Unless you explained already somewhere then please link me. I would like to prevent this, alot of our jobs here are capturing presentations and i use this MBP for everything of that purpose.

Id like to know about this, and how did you confirm this? I hope not on poor guinea pig HVX's. :(
 
The Powerbook G4 is still a solid machine.

Much more well designed than any PC laptop.
 
We've been shooting "Holy War" and using a couple of older (Bought this year before the switch over) G4 15" PowerBooks with 1.67 processors and 1.5g of ram, FCP 5.0.4 and OWC 500 RAID drives with no problems at all. You will have to look around to find one now because the new ones have Intel processors and no PCMA slot so they are not plug and play like mine are. So far we have only used the 4g P2 cards, as we are shooting in 720/24PN and they have given us plenty of time to shoot a scene or even a few if they are short, before we have to download. And the picture quality is very sharp and downloading is pretty fast. I also bought a couple of LACIE FW800 PC cards so that we could just shoot to the OWC drives but haven't had the need to do that yet, it would take long scenes to need that capacity and no one can remember that many lines on our sets.

For editing we are using an older Quad G5 2.5 processors with 4.5g of ram (Also bought this year) and it rocks. Good luck.

David
 
Cynic821 said:
Barry, please help and explain how the MBP and specifically a 6pin port is blowing the firewire on the HVX. Unless you explained already somewhere then please link me. I would like to prevent this, alot of our jobs here are capturing presentations and i use this MBP for everything of that purpose.
Click to expand...
Hot-plugging a camcorder into a Mac has been linked to dozens of reports of blown firewire ports. Not just HVXs, but DVXs, Sony PD170s, Sony FX1s, all sorts of camcorders. It has nothing to do with the camcorder, it appears to be somehow tied to the Mac's use of a 6-pin firewire port, as the 6-pin port transmits power which somehow, some way, is short-circuiting the camcorder firewire port.

I've hot-swapped a thousand times on a PC laptop and never had a problem, but that is presumably because the PC laptops typically use 4-pin firewire connections which inherently cannot transmit power, as opposed to the Mac 6-pin ports.

If you always make sure at least one of the devices is turned off (either camcorder or Mac) you shouldn't have a problem. I believe some manufacturers are now recommending that BOTH devices be powered off before plugging in or unplugging a firewire cable between them.
 
Ok, thanks Barry! Ill make sure to have the camera and laptop turned off before plugging it in. What about a hub? Or possibly converting the 6 pin on the laptop, into a 4pin?
 
I'm looking at the Dell Latitude 620- 14" screen, Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram, 256 MB Nvidia, 100 GB 7200 rpm, PCMCIA and Express Card, DVD RW, additional onboard 80 GB 5400rpm HD (for $150- think of it as 10x 8GB P2 cards).....7 hour battery........
$1750....the Latitude 420 has the 12" screen.... seems like the ticket....Are the warranty's worth it?
 
Bloddy hell... if the HVX's FW socket is 'blown' whats the answer i.e. How easy is it to repair and more importantly what roughly would it cost?

I'll be making shure the HVX is Off from now on... having the Mac off as well would be a PITA!

Indy... in India!
 
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