I just bought a killer laptop (Sager 8790) from Peter Alexander and he did a beautiful job of building it out for me. Big, major props to Peter for this one.
3.2 ghz p4 HT
2 gigs ram
17" 1680x1050
RAID 0,1 (althogh it's turned off now because laptop drives are too small for vienna.)
firewire/usb2/tv I/O/wireless/bluetooth/camera/4x speakers/7-in-1 card reader/DVD+-R/RW/etc
Oh-my-god beautiful matte/glossy screen - everything looks like a high-quality photograph.
*heh-heh I probably wouldn't have paid for this but gosh darn it, it's the only choice you have with this machine.*
ATI mobility radeon 9700 with 256 megs video ram - smokin
Works beautifully. I converted the entire 1st edition to Kontakt (their importer is probably 90-95% correct, but no showstoppers. Dumb stuff like messed up keyswitching.) The conversion went *really*fast. Did the whole thing in a day. Threw in SX and GPO and it all works flawlessly. Really fast. Not a single problem yet. Waiting for GS3 to bring an end to that run although with the Kontakt importer doing such a good job, I may just punt on gs3 for a while until several fixes come out and people stop griping. That's what I'm doing with SX2 now.
Stuck an Echo Indigo I/O in there and it works great. The ASIO drivers were flaky all the way up through 1024 samples, but I switched to the steinberg ASIO-DirectX drivers (typically seen as second class ASIO drivers) and it's rock solid at 512 samples (11 ms.) Guess Echo's directx drivers are better than their ASIO drivers.
The steinberg midex3 usb midi interface works great although it sucks up so much power that my usb port can't supply enough and I need a wall wart. Irritating, but given that this is a dektop replacement, not a run-for-days without a battery computer, I'm not sweating it.
Downsides (none of these are Peter's fault - just practicalities of the machine.):
Get's pretty hot.
Fans are quite audible (because it's getting hot.) The sager groups all say that if you get a cooling mechanism of some kind - there are several - the temp goes down and the fans rev down. So I need to look into that.
9+ pounds. Don't buy this if you've got a bad back.
You can sit there and watch the battery drain - takes about 1.5 hours. I bought the 8-cell battery so that I could fit in the tv I/O, but there is a 12-cell battery available. Takes a screwdriver to pop the tv I/O device though, so not an easily swappable thing.
Peter partitioned it for me into a music partition and a working/programming partition. Works beautifully for me. I've got visual studio/cygwin/office/flash -usual programming things on there and everything is super fast. No problems at all. Both partitions are running netscape for web browsing and email - IE an outlook are not coming anywhere near this computer. Biggest security holes in the world.
The wireless networking works great. Sat in Starbucks the other day writing away, drinking my iced coffee, feeling like a yuppie/dork. But it was over at harvard med school so comparitively speaking I was still doing alright. good stuff.
Networks beatifully with OSX - but that's mainly props to the guys who wrote the Mach kernel.
The keyboard actually types pretty well for a laptop and makes the dell keyboards feel like a cheap piece of trash. I use an external keyboard if I'm working in a fixed place, but it's fine if you're out and about.
The whole thing looks gorgeous and feels solid and well built - did I mention I love my laptop? I doubt that you could get a better machine from alienware or other places - you will pay extra money for a red or green case, though.
In short - it ain't cheap but man it's nice. My wife an I are on the road for the next year and a half all over the US and then to London so I decided to take the plunge (we're not going to think about what this machine will cost in six months. - breathe - ) But now I'm kicking a** and more importantly the only obstacle to me writing music is my own writers' block. After a long time of fighting aganst technology, I have everything on one portable machine that works fast and flawlessly.
I totally recommend this box and I would absolutely recomend that you have peter set it up for you.
-denny-
3.2 ghz p4 HT
2 gigs ram
17" 1680x1050
RAID 0,1 (althogh it's turned off now because laptop drives are too small for vienna.)
firewire/usb2/tv I/O/wireless/bluetooth/camera/4x speakers/7-in-1 card reader/DVD+-R/RW/etc
Oh-my-god beautiful matte/glossy screen - everything looks like a high-quality photograph.
*heh-heh I probably wouldn't have paid for this but gosh darn it, it's the only choice you have with this machine.*
ATI mobility radeon 9700 with 256 megs video ram - smokin
Works beautifully. I converted the entire 1st edition to Kontakt (their importer is probably 90-95% correct, but no showstoppers. Dumb stuff like messed up keyswitching.) The conversion went *really*fast. Did the whole thing in a day. Threw in SX and GPO and it all works flawlessly. Really fast. Not a single problem yet. Waiting for GS3 to bring an end to that run although with the Kontakt importer doing such a good job, I may just punt on gs3 for a while until several fixes come out and people stop griping. That's what I'm doing with SX2 now.
Stuck an Echo Indigo I/O in there and it works great. The ASIO drivers were flaky all the way up through 1024 samples, but I switched to the steinberg ASIO-DirectX drivers (typically seen as second class ASIO drivers) and it's rock solid at 512 samples (11 ms.) Guess Echo's directx drivers are better than their ASIO drivers.
The steinberg midex3 usb midi interface works great although it sucks up so much power that my usb port can't supply enough and I need a wall wart. Irritating, but given that this is a dektop replacement, not a run-for-days without a battery computer, I'm not sweating it.
Downsides (none of these are Peter's fault - just practicalities of the machine.):
Get's pretty hot.
Fans are quite audible (because it's getting hot.) The sager groups all say that if you get a cooling mechanism of some kind - there are several - the temp goes down and the fans rev down. So I need to look into that.
9+ pounds. Don't buy this if you've got a bad back.
You can sit there and watch the battery drain - takes about 1.5 hours. I bought the 8-cell battery so that I could fit in the tv I/O, but there is a 12-cell battery available. Takes a screwdriver to pop the tv I/O device though, so not an easily swappable thing.
Peter partitioned it for me into a music partition and a working/programming partition. Works beautifully for me. I've got visual studio/cygwin/office/flash -usual programming things on there and everything is super fast. No problems at all. Both partitions are running netscape for web browsing and email - IE an outlook are not coming anywhere near this computer. Biggest security holes in the world.
The wireless networking works great. Sat in Starbucks the other day writing away, drinking my iced coffee, feeling like a yuppie/dork. But it was over at harvard med school so comparitively speaking I was still doing alright. good stuff.
Networks beatifully with OSX - but that's mainly props to the guys who wrote the Mach kernel.
The keyboard actually types pretty well for a laptop and makes the dell keyboards feel like a cheap piece of trash. I use an external keyboard if I'm working in a fixed place, but it's fine if you're out and about.
The whole thing looks gorgeous and feels solid and well built - did I mention I love my laptop? I doubt that you could get a better machine from alienware or other places - you will pay extra money for a red or green case, though.
In short - it ain't cheap but man it's nice. My wife an I are on the road for the next year and a half all over the US and then to London so I decided to take the plunge (we're not going to think about what this machine will cost in six months. - breathe - ) But now I'm kicking a** and more importantly the only obstacle to me writing music is my own writers' block. After a long time of fighting aganst technology, I have everything on one portable machine that works fast and flawlessly.
I totally recommend this box and I would absolutely recomend that you have peter set it up for you.
-denny-