Need Hardware Advice On Powerbook & External Hd Options

[kevin808]

Hi everyone,

Could you please help me make an informed decision? I am about to throw my PC out a frickin' window in favor of a nice new Mac. Ultimately I would like to get a Powerbook and run Logic Audio, but I am apprehensive about this setup thinking that maybe the Powerbook would be under-powered due to its slower Hard Drive RPM speeds (4,500, or 5,500), or mabey even the g4 processor. (I would like to get at least a 1.25Ghz or above)

I did a little research here and found that people are using external hard drives with their Powerbooks. This coupled with the fact that I have my wife’s 1Ghz iMac, and the new Logic Audio 7 Package uses other networked computers to help process effects plug-ins and other jobs within logic - is making me think a Powerbook is not a bad choice.

My main question is: Are Firewire 800 drives faster at delivering information than the Powerbooks own internal Hard Drive? I'm looking at a 200 GB LaCie FW 800 drive.

And what are some of your experiences with how your Powerbooks perform playing your tracks? Lag issues? No probelms - runs great?

I also just got a Roland MV-8000 Sampler/Workstation which will be synced up to the Powerbook via midi, and will be doing some of the sound rendering and effects.

Any advise or thoughts would be helpful and appreciated. Like everyone I'm just trying to have my cake and eat it too...

Thanks,
Kevin808

[arvidtp]

Well, I am using a powerbook 1.25 GHz (see specs in signiture) with logic pro 6.4. I only have 512 megs of RAM and I need more for 'convenience' speed... But my machine so far has held up extremely well in demanding realtime stuff using Logic, MaxMSP and other software, and even jacking them together. I dont have an external drive, but I hardly ever run into a problem with the internal being too slow. But then again I am not recording with tons of channels, so I usually dont go over 10-15 audio tracks playing back at once. I just have my disk buffer on large in logic. I guess this slows down responsiveness to play/record commands by maybe 1/4 second, but that doesnt bother me, as once it is playing/recording that makes no differnece. Maybe I would notice a difference if i got one.

With Pro Tools, CPU efficiency was miserable, but that was Pro TOols LE. With Logic, I find it difficult to hit the computer's realtime processing ceiling! It's a blast.

that sounds cool about the generic drive/enclosure, nate. Maybe I will think about doing that. Where do you get that stuff cheap? Is it all mac compatible etc?