Hi, I'm looking to buy a laptop, largely to use as an effects processor / recording unit for guitar etc.

I'll need to run a program called guitar rig, cubase and I'll be using the net and general word processory stuff on it too.

As I'm planning to use it for live performances, reliability and not crashing is absolutely essential, but it also needs enough power (and a firewire port) to process guitar input with as close to zero latency as possible.

I have a budget of around £800, but could go a bit higher if necessary -

I just wondered if anyone would know whether an apple powerbook or a standard pc laptop would be the best tool for the job, and what the difference between them would be in terms of performance and reliability?

Also if anyone knows of any decent deals going I'd like to know about them! I wouldn't mind having some warranty though as I'll be carrying it around a lot.

Cheers, Chris!

A lot depends on where you are getting the software from to be honest! If you... errr... already have software then a decent apple machine is very good but if you then have to buy all the software you are only going to have about 48pence left for the laptop itself! People who have apples seem to love them, everyone I know sticks with PC's as the software is easier to come by!

You can get decent external sound cards for your laptop, with all the necessary inputs. If you're only dealing with audio, you shouldn't have too many performance issues.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002060CU/qid=1105709806/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-5104929-7179007

I used to do something similar but for audio and video and the laptop couldn't keep up and kept dropping frames.

I'd be tempted to go for a mac powerbook, but they're quite expensive, and of course you'll need a descent soundcard, of which firewire is probably the best route - there's a few descent cheapish (about £200) f/w units out there which usually have lots of ins and outs. But they do reckon macs are better at handling audio and video than PC's( and a lot simpler to use!)

Are you planning to use guitar rig live? The latency on a live input with it is pretty huge, even with a descent soundcard. For just recording and mixing, fine, but I'd go for a descent fx box for live stuff, which will do pretty much the same as guitar rig I would have thought (well, apart from the amp and mic modelling of course!).

Yeah, I think I will be using it live, with a good soundcard in the firewire port and a decent amount of RAM (bought my powerbook, has 512 at the moment but I might put another gig in if I ever have enough money!) it has a pretty low latency (around 7 ms) - I've been messing around on the one in sound control and that sounds fine, don't think the pc they have it set up on in there's that amazing either.

So far, I would really recommend the powerbooks! I was setting it up in my bedroom, reinstalled the OS as it's second hand, and when it restarted after installing it popped up 'software updates available, download now?'

Thus picking up our wireless network randomly from 2 floors away without me having to do a thing to it! When I think of the trouble it took to get our pcs on it...! :|

Plus, it's just so damn pretty :)

Hooopefully it'll also work, I need to get hold of some software and guitar rig. I haven't had a great deal of success with effects pedals though to be honest, I had a boss GT-6 until I sold it to help fund this, and when I got rid of it I realised I actually got just as good if not better sounds just through my amp effects! (Except for the inability to imitate a flute, I guess)

Think that's something to do with signal loss through all the circuitry in it myself, when you have a huge chain of effects pedals you have to put signal boosters in which multieffects pedals don't have, despite having to process the signal through nearly as long a pathway.

Thanks for the pointers anyway, I'll stop rambling on.

Cheers, Chris

I say this to everyone, but try Ableton Live:
http://www.ableton.com
It's fantastic! And it'll fit in nicely with Cubase as its Rewire compatible.