why a laptop at all?

[mark <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

I'm all for having a nice small laptop be one's rig.  Hell, it would 
make all our lives easier.  Here's my question:

Why?

It seems they're riddled with issues, including noise and latency 
issues.  A Sony VAIO is going to run you about $1500, an Apple Titanium 
Powerbook is going to be $300 more.

Tack some software on top of that, and you're easily looking at $2500.  
Now, add a midi controller and say we're in the neighborhood of $2700.

Now, you can easily pick up something like the new roland V synth, Korg 
Triton or another work station style keyboard for $2200 that will kick 
that laptop's ass in terms of capabilities and sound quality and leave 
you almost enough money for an EDP leftover.  Rick's already got a 
Repeater and an EDP.  He could spend the extra cash on a decent 
multi-effects processor

Now, I'm not saying that all of these things are equal.  I'm sure there 
are software packages that will do things that no hardware box will do 
alone, and visa versa.  It just has always seemed to me that if you're 
looking for bang for the buck, hardware wins... though it's starting to 
get closer.  I guess I'm not aware of capabilities, but my guess is 
that a high end Sony VAIO or TiBook is not going to give me enough 
power to run Live, a VST software synth, with a few vst effects on it 
all at the same time with an acceptable amount of latency and no 
glitches.  Am I wrong?  My company is always looking for a way to do 
realtime video presentations from a laptop, and as far as I can tell, 
it's not possible with the quality we need.  A G3 tower with an Aurora 
video card is the closest we've gotten.

Mark Sottilaro