Kuuki Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 no they are not. i advise not getting a 'Heap of crap" besides whats you budget? (if you want to get one) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commander 598 Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 I should also mention that I got a new PC last Christmas with a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. The only thing even somewhat holding me back is the video card, and despite that I can still run most games at mostly high settings, give or take a few (Soft Shadows and effects like Bloom). AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ 2.6Ghz 2GB RAM 250GB HD Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Radeon X1300 Pro Windows Vista Home Premium (You could have just checked the Xfire profile I just got in my sig for even more detailed specs) I've gotten at least one old game (AvP1) to work with Vista that never wanted to work properly in XP... The Vista upgrade could have gone smoother... Dell decided to include a BIOS update that ran from the desktop (Which is stated to be something to avoid) and it erased the BIOS on my motherboard. Thanks to a year of warranty, I got it replaced. Creative apparantly didn't think they needed to be involved in Vista so they didn't worry about drivers... My sound crackles in and out now... Beyond that no problems whatsoever... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyan Farlander Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 besides whats you budget? (if you want to get one) I was thinking somewhere around $2000. I want to get something good, but there's no reason to go nuts. If I do get a laptop, it would be great if I could use it closed with a normal keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Anyone know if that's possible? Or would I need a docking station? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zargon Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 possible, you can set it to not hibernate when its shut................. Keyan: if you get an HP get a good warranty. for 2 grand....You could build a NICE home rig with a Core 2 Duo and buy a nice dual core laptop from a big box store I had my appointment today with the Urologist.......and all is well! Prostate shrank back to a normal size all on its own, so I'm pretty excited that I dont need surgery or have prostate cancer! Commander: Im surprised Vista runs on your machine since you have an ATI card! You should pop to a X1950XT or the comprable NVidia, huge upgrade for about 200 bucks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildstar Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 I was thinking somewhere around $2000. I want to get something good, but there's no reason to go nuts. If I do get a laptop, it would be great if I could use it closed with a normal keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Anyone know if that's possible? Or would I need a docking station? I'm not sure about external monitors, but USB keyboards and mice should work with laptops that have USB ports (and they all do these days). EDIT: The manager of my apartment building has a Dell notebook w/ a VGA port, so make sure the specs of your laptop include either a VGA or a DVI port (DVI = Digital Video Interface, a newer standard for connecting digital video displays, i.e. flat panel monitors). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 i advise not getting a 'Heap of crap" Wouldn't H.P. = 'Heap of Poop?' Jus' sayin'... Laptops are great for recording ProTools sessions. They just suck at mixing them... If you get a "Desktop-Replacement" type laptop... then you might be OK. Just not very portable. But still worlds more portable than a tower system, I suppose... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 (Starting a new post for clarity's sake...) Movie (O-13, that is...) was OK. Better than #2... Maybe even slightly better than #1. Pretty good overall. Seriously complicated plot... but the payoff was cool. Seemed all a bit too easy, though. A few more setbacks would have added some tension. A couple of good laughs, however. That counts for a lot in my book these days. Rest of the day was,.. eh. I personally had a lousy time, overall. That was nobody's fault but my own, of course... First of all it really didn't help that I was running on short sleep all day. That small fact simply did no great favors to me to improve my mood. And even though the gathering was limited to people in my department that I work with everyday... and I know and like everybody who was in the room... I still get completely socially-phobic the second the body count gets up over 3 or 4. I can deal with people OK when it's one-to-one. Or even perhaps two-at-a-time... but more than that and I simply get overwhelmed. I'm so uncomfortable, reserved, shy, and quiet as it is dealing with say just a single person that I know really well, that this type of situation just about kills me. Seriously... my vision of Hell is being at a party or a wedding reception with no escape for all eternity. So when you get more people than 4 or 5 all together, milling about and socializing,.. I totally shut down, clam up, get wildly uncomfortable and self-conscious, and start looking for excuses to get the hell away from there ASAP. I couldn't do that inconspicuously today... so I saw there was an acoustic guitar there, so I grabbed it and noodled quietly (not loud enough for anybody to even hear what I was playing... which truly wasn't much of anything, anyway) on the far fringes of the group, attempting to avoid any real contact. Yeah... I'm really bad at this ****. Parties make my skin crawl, and even occasionally physically ill... what can I say? I really wish it were otherwise... but every time I've tried it in my life, the same results are reached. We also ate lunch way too early for me. I normally eat my breakfast around 2:30 or 3. This was 11:30/ noon. I had no appetite (and being fully in the grips of my rabid non-social nature wasn't helping at all either...) So I barely touched any of the food. Needless to say, I was ravenous by the time I got out of the movie. It really also didn't help me that much that most of the food brought was vegetarian/ vegan. Didn't give me much to savor to get a decent appetite going. Somebody brought some home-made chili that was really good... but it was cold, and for whatever reason, I really didn't want to be bothered to deal with microwaving it. I didn't get any theater snacks, either... just cuz. (Mainly because I worked in a movie theater all the way through high school, and I can't even smell movie popcorn without gagging. OD'ed on it back then... Plus, I know what goes on behind the scenes with all that stuff... what's the old adage about seeing sausage being made?) All in all, the best part of the day for me was the part where I got to go home. And I think that's kinda sad... Oh well... it is what it is. I doubt I'll ever change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyan Farlander Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Wouldn't H.P. = 'Heap of Poop?' Laptops are great for recording ProTools sessions. They just suck at mixing them... Really? Why do you say that? I would think it would be exactly the opposite. Do you have any Pro Tools experience? Right now I have a version of Cubase that came with my synthesizer, but since I bought that M-Audio interface, I wanted to try the demo of Pro Tools M-powered (which is apparently the same thing as Pro Tools LE, except for M-Audio interfaces). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Laptops tend to bog down in the mixing phase due to the processing power needed to handle all the edits, crossfades, automation, and plugins. The mobile processors tend to crap out under the load. Straight multitrack recording, without a lot of fancy routing or processing tends to be a little smoother. That's why I said a "Desktop-Replacement" machine would be better. If you have basically the same processor and RAM as a tower system, just in a different case, you would probably be alright. I have a fair amount of ProTools experience... but it was a long time ago. I haven't worked with it lately. I do see a lot of guys doing huge, huge sessions on thier laptops these days anyway. Mostly on Macs... but even still, it's a fairly impressive amount of stuff that you can do before you hit the limits of a modern machine. But mixing is the one thing I tend to hear people complain about when working off a laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Jones Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 I got a HP Pavilion with a T5500 Core2Duo and 2 GiB RAM, and nothing's going anywhere "down" even if I really beat the crap out of it. It's small and very portable. I know some DJ folks who do their 8 hour live mixing via laptops and record the session at the same time, and nothing lags or something. They use a Macbook, HP or Sony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Well... for a couple of tracks at a time almost any current computer should be fine. Probably up to 12 to 24 tracks. I'm really talking about 24 to 48 or 64 track recordings here... with massive amounts of edits and multiple plugins on every track. EDIT: Oh yeah... 2nd night in a row that I woke up at 3 a.m. and never got back to sleep. Is life fun, or what?? I ask you... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 brakes are going on my truck. i dont have it all payed off yet either....guess i'll have to take it easy for...a month. there goes my chance at buying an xbox 360. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Eh... just go ahead and buy the 360. What's the worst that could happen? (Heh heh heh... I've been using that phrase a lot lately. Just call me "Mr. Free Bad Advice Guy.") Welcome to being a grown up. Sucks,.. don't it? I personally hate it, myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 well as long as i can play SWG i'll be ok. But when Force Unleashed comes out, so help me God i better have that 360!!! lmao!!!! SWG ftw right now though, so i'm not too worried about it.....just am a bit nervous about driving the truck...would sux0rz if the brakes went completely. gotta get my old car sold that would help pay for the brakes. too bad i can't just avoid *paying* altogether and just trade my car in for brakes for my truck. damn the dollar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyan Farlander Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Well... for a couple of tracks at a time almost any current computer should be fine. Probably up to 12 to 24 tracks. I'm really talking about 24 to 48 or 64 track recordings here... with massive amounts of edits and multiple plugins on every track. Well, Pro Tools LE only allows 32 tracks anyway (48 with some kind of upgrade). But I can't even see using even 32 tracks. Piano, bass, drums, a few synths, a few guitars, some vocals...that's like 20 tracks at most. I never really make any edits. And I use minimal effects - reverb mostly, maybe some compressor or chorus. Delay in some cases. So yeah, I'm thinking a laptop might do the job. I'll have to see if there are any good games coming out that might make we want to go the desktop route, though. But I doubt it - the only computer game I've bought since 1999 is Doom III, and that wasn't all that great. If only the space combat sim genre would make a comeback. Actually, there's a new Wing Commander game on X-Box Live Arcade or something. It's kind of arcade-y but I think maybe they're testing the waters to see what kind of interest there would be in a full Wing Commander sequel. Let's hope... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zargon Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 the new quake looks badass. Bioware has a new game coming out that looks promising as all get out........... there have been some newer space sims that I played, like starshatter, it SUCKED. its so OVERLY complex its impossible to play and have fun. The last good space combat game was freelancer, and freespace 2 before that..... Shadow Run looks interesting, but its requires vista for PC and I am not going upgrade yet due to my ATI card and save a lan card dying, the machine runs GREAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commander 598 Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Commander: Im surprised Vista runs on your machine since you have an ATI card! You should pop to a X1950XT or the comprable NVidia, huge upgrade for about 200 bucks! Where are you getting your info? Nvidia and Creative are the ones that screwed the pooch with Vista. ATI cards work just fine... Also, got a Zune. I got it because it does video in most formats, you don't have to squint to see it, I had $230 bucks, and I hate Apple. Red vs Blue episodes actually look better on a Zune than on my PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nute Gunray Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 These are two of the most beautiful screenshots I've ever seen of any game ever Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Weird day at work. Looking back, I felt like I was really busy most of the day... yet I can't really think of anything major that I actually managed to get accomplished in all that time. Wiped out. 2 nights with little sleep is taking it's toll. Went pretty heavy on the caffeine today just to keep going,.. much to my chagrin. I also realized something while eating lunch this afternoon (around my usual time: 3-ish...): That was the first thing I had really had to eat since the barely touched half plate of food at lunch yesterday. I had snacked on a couple of things (nuts; trail mix) in the interim... but that was really the first real meal I had had within that 24+ hour period. As hungry as I was when I left the theater yesterday, I never ate when I got home. I dozed off almost as soon as I got home, woke up later, posted here, and was in bed shortly after that. No dinner, now that I think about it. Huh. Probably not good... not healthy, anyway. Forced myself to walk to the station and back today... even though I really didn't feel like it. I have to be in a bit earlier tomorrow, so that will kill any possibility of taking that route to work. Unless I'm awake and up before 4 a.m. again, that is. I'll have to get out for an extended round of activity after work tomorrow night, as the rest of the weekend looks killed with work and chores. (Egads... laundry time again already?!!?) Insanely busy week next week. Great. Just what I need... now that I've started to relax and almost enjoy life again. Working every day, Mon. thru Sat. Late nights, followed by early mornings. I'll be a basket case by the end of the week. I already feel like crap now... My birthday falls in there somewhere, too. I truly hope I'm just wayyyy too busy at the time to even remember it. I'm sure someone will totally spoil and ruin my day and remind me of it even if I do somehow manage to block it out, however... I already feel too old. I have no desire to get another second older than I am at the moment. Or at least to never acknowledge it. Somehow I have to figure out how to stop the forward passage of time... Feels like a night to just eat and sleep. Having trouble keeping my eyes open just typing this. @Nute: That IS truly spectacular! I need to get my hands on that (and a comp able to run it on) ASAP!!! Wow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Temporarily Fixed, my truck's brakes are. Got some brake fluid, tho it was 3/4 full i topped it off, pumped the brake a few times and now i don't need to press it through the floor when i want to stop. Hopefully it'll last til I'm able to have it checked by someone. uhm...did a few things today...went fishing at around 10....caught nothing, the river was too damn muddy. got home and then went w/my landlord to his shop to get his box truck so we could load his broken riding lawnmower into it, well...his brother had to use the truck so that was a wasted trip... got home, then headed over to my parents' and their landlord had caught a snapping turtle, had it in a trashcan with water, so we hauled that over to an old farmer friend of ours because he cleans and cooks them. He gave me some tomato plants, i guess i'll try and plant them over the weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cmdr. Cracken Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 I finally gopt my new ati x1950 GT working. a pretty good investment for about 150 dollars offa newegg. Unfortunatly, technical problems prevented me from doing much until about an hour ago. I apprently don't know how to seat a agp graphics card... >.> I leave for Jersy tomorrow, won't be back until monday... though i will take pics of my bitchin' new set up. it's hawt.... RT: Started writing a song.... we'll see how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Temporarily Fixed, my truck's brakes are. Yoda, your mechanic, is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zargon Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Where are you getting your info? Nvidia and Creative are the ones that screwed the pooch with Vista. ATI cards work just fine... Also, got a Zune. I got it because it does video in most formats, you don't have to squint to see it, I had $230 bucks, and I hate Apple. Red vs Blue episodes actually look better on a Zune than on my PC. last I had heard in March ATI drivers were barely good enough to get you INTO vista and nvidias worked fine......... but since I dont have those issues I havent been reading too much about them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 yes he is in fact. work is nice and steady/slow today so i came home for a little SWG....lmao i want to get a new video card, I've got PCI-E slot currently it has Radeon 128 x300 card, my budget is $250. What good card can I get for that, also will I need to buy a new power supply? I've got a Dell Dimension 4700 with 1 GB SDRAM PC3200... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nute Gunray Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 My only weak point is I have a 7600GS, which sucks. I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 with two gigs of ram and...a 7600GS. What was I thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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