RE: choosing the right laptop for live looping , real time DSP processing and running Video

["Qua Veda" <qua@oregon.com>]

Hi Rick, et al

At work, the corp issued laptop is a Thinkpad (Lenovo, PC, WindowsXP).  As
Kris said, these are excellent computers. I recently participated in a
MacBookPro pilot, where I was issued a MacBookPro with WindowsXP running in
Parallels.  With think configuration, I had to boot each OS, logon to the
network twice, shut down both OS's  -  this was a pain.  Also Windows ,
running in Parallels on the Mac OS , does not allow Windows to take
advantage of all the MacBookPro ram or video ram.     At least twice in 5
weeks, Parallel's crashed - simply disappeared without any notice or
messages - resulting in lost work.      This week, I turned in the
MacBookPro to get my old Thinkpad back.    Based on my experience, I would
NOT recommend running Windows XP in Parallels on the MacBookPro.

The Mac has about 3% market share of the laptops, so that's partly why they
cost more.  But they are beautiful, and I especially liked the display and
the keybd backlighting and  the keypads which are large and easy to type 
on.

For the price of the MacBookPro, there are companies that will custom
configure a PC laptop,  optimized for audio applications,  with multiple
SATA hard drives (separating programs and audio files on different drives
can speed performance),  and excellent support.    The PC laptops are more
likely to get the latest/greatest processors before the Macs.   If I was
buying a laptop for music/video today, I'd have to give these WindowsXP
laptops serious consideration.        

-Qua