RE: Looping with a PC laptop... which one?

["Mike Barrs" <mbarrs@nightviewer.com>]

> From: Alan Kroeger [mailto:nospam@developsolutions.com]

>
> I wanted to reply to this topic for a few days but, my email provider
> changed some of my settings without letting me know (problem resolved)
> Alright I wanted to suggest the alternative of using a desktop
> instead of a
> laptop. Laptops are almost always obsolete by the time you get
> them and are
> a real pain as far as upgrading is concerned. I haven't really tried this
> but am giving serious consideration to doing this I have some
> concerns about
> electrical noise and such. I suppose I could put it in it's own rack that
> might isolate some of the electrical interferance issues.

I use a rackmount Carillon in my home recording studio:

http://www.carillonusa.com/

Very solid, very stable. I've had mine for a year and a half with zero
problems. Kinda heavy though. Close to dead silent (although that wouldn't
matter so much for live gigs). It's sitting just below a rackmount unit 
that
has my recording A/D and D/A converters, and I'm getting no RF leakage at
all. You'd want to use it with an LCD screen, otherwise a CRT will generate
too much RF.

That said, if I was putting together a live rig with a computer and didn't
have cartage, so I had to schlep everything myself, I'd definitely go with 
a
laptop rig for the light weight, compact size, and integrated display.
Rackmount PC's only make sense to me for maybe big stadium shows, or
permanent installations. Laptops are powerful enough now, and you can get
nice (but expensive) interfaces like the RME stuff for extremely low
latency. I've used an older laptop (IBM Thinkpad) for several years in an
astronomy hobby where we dragged it out into remote outdoor locations,
usually getting it covered with dew before the night was over. It takes a
licking and keeps on ticking. If it can survive that, it can survive live
gigging... although if I was getting *paid* to gig, I'd have another laptop
as a backup.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention the Carillon in case anyone is thinking
rackmount. This is more expensive than putting one together yourself, but
it's a great off-the-shelf solution. I got one of their bare bones models
(PC Cores) to hold the price down.

Mike Barrs