What's a cheap laptop that I can use for DJing?

September 4, 2008 11:22 AM

I'm trying to build an ultra-mobile DJ setup. What laptop can I get that has the lowest cost-to-usefulness ratio?

I have an M-Audio Torq Xponent. I've been using it with my iMac, because I like the screen real estate, but I'm getting pretty sick of lugging it around, so I'm looking at low-cost laptop alternatives. I'd probably also use this laptop for pretty basic web-browsing / emailing / word processing, also. Would a netbook like one of the higher-end Eee PCs or an MSI Wind be able to function in this capacity? I'll be using it with a USB soundcard , so i'm not concerned with the sound specs, just the processing. I'm usually a mac guy, but their laptops are out of my range and I don't know much about the PC market. What should I be looking at?

posted by clcapps to media & arts (5 comments total)

Amazon's got a $75 rebate on the 2.1Ghz MacBook . . . $1009.
posted by troy at 11:28 AM on September 4, 2008

If you can wait till the 15th or so (maybe the 9th... all guesses are bad anyway) new MacBooks will be introduced and the prices of the last gen will certainly fall.
posted by tmcw at 11:54 AM on September 4, 2008

I paid $750 about five months ago for my great condition (well, before I started manhandling it) used 12" PowerBook 1.5 GHz. Another hundred or so bucks to max out the RAM and get a 160 GB hard drive. It's 4.6 lbs. and about as big as a 200-page book printed on 8.5x11" paper. I heart it to death.

Most stuff runs acceptably fast on it. I usually have about eleven apps open at a time, including Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and it's not painful.

I like the non-widescreen display much better than the Intel Mac laptops, since it's much more convenient for web browsing, word processing, etc. In fact I'd say it's more convenient for just about anything other than watching DVD's, but who'd want to do that on a 12" screen anyway?

If you live in a major U.S. city, try checking Craigslist for postings. They're not too hard to find, and often in good condition since they seem to attract the anal-obsessive crowd. ;) And of course they're pretty common on eBay, although I've always been wary of spending that much money on something used that I haven't seen.
posted by DLWM at 4:40 PM on September 4, 2008

The system requirements for Torq Xponent show it as needing at least a 1.6Ghz CPU and recommends a 2.4. Although the newer netbooks have the 1.6Ghz Atom, these don't perform as well as other cpus with the same speed so probably wouldn't be powerful enough. You should perhaps look to getting a cheap dell with a 2.4Ghz intel core duo and 2gb ram.
posted by JonB at 10:09 AM on September 6, 2008

I'm going to join in with the people recommending Apple. I feel like you're going to get a better usefulness ratio out of a refurb/used Mac--which can be pretty cheap anyway. That way, you can run both Mac and PC apps and plug-ins.
posted by abcde at 5:42 PM on September 6, 2008