Ibook 4200 Hard Drive Unsuitable For Daw Work? Options

[ambivilant]

It seems that next to RAM, the most important thing for a music machine is disk speed and 4200 is ridiculouisly slow, isn't it? I mean, for let's say a 7 minute song with y'know, 10 tracks or whatever, and a few softsynths, will an iBook with 512 end up queuing audio onto the hard drive and slow to the point of uselessness?

It's too bad the iBook doesn't come with a 5400 hard drive option; I'm left with a jump from a $1000 laptop to a $1600 one, and it's depressing because I really wanted to get a mac too. But the iBook has everything I need except that. Maybe I'm wrong, is the HD really that important after all?

[roque]

Take a look on Hitachi's 7k60 hard disk... it's an 7200rpm internal HD avaliable for iBook/Powerbook with excelent performance and very efficient power/heat management.

According Hitachi:
" Increasing the spindle speed to 7200 RPM, (...) , will improve the data rate by 71% over 4200 RPM drives and 33% over 5400 RPM drives. Latency will be improved by 42% and 25% respectively."

I think external firewire restricts a lot in terms of portability... any way they still offer bigger capacity and lower cost compared to notebook HDs.