Hi everyone, wondering if anyone can tell me how to go about finding a laptop or netbook to use for onlocation recording. I already have a high end firewire audio interfaces, so I'm hoping that it will be:

- fanless ( or possible to turn off the fan *even at high loads* )
- SSD drives
- some way to get firewire in there, either by an expresscard adapter or are there other options?
- not too expensive. I'm just going to run ubuntu and record, no mixing or processing on this machine

all else is secondary really, size, keyboard, battery

thanks!
iain

Unless you have something that's really underpowered (and which might as well be fanless), it's not wise to turn off the fans at high load unless you do it only for a few minutes. If that's what you meant, any reasonable laptop (IGP, <25W CPU and decent heatsinks) which supports fan control would do. But I guess it would be more reasonable to use a CULV model with Intel graphics.
I use Thinkpads which used to be supported by tpfancontrol (I haven't tried the newest models). I think there's a similar program for Dells and there's of course Speedfan. Just make sure the fan can be controlled in software before buying.

Most laptops have PCMCIA or ExpressCard even if they don't have firewire. I guess that rules out some cheapos though. But used laptops are cheap enough.

Hi Iain

I have the same requirements as you (llooking for cheap silent portable firewire recorder for motu traveler) and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching this.
Firewire seems to be going out of fashion so all the following suggestions are getting on a bit (which is good because they are available cheap on ebay).
The texas instrument firewire chip is always recommended, I have only confirmed two of these units have it.


Unit's I have found that are fanless and have a firewire port are:

Samsung Q30 (only one I've found with 6 pin firewire which could provide bus power) cheap some sold £50

Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook P7120 (Texas Instruments firewire chip) around £100 or more

Acer TravelMate c112

Motion Computing M1400 ("FireWire (IEEE 1394):Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller" quoted from gentoo wiki"FireWire (IEEE 1394):Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller" quoted from gentoo wiki)

Sony VAIO VGN-X505VP

Samsung Q40 (4 pin firewire)

Dell Latitude X1 (rebranded samsung q30 4 pin firewire) cheap some sold £50

samsung sens q40

The OQO Model 1

Sony VAIO P Series VGN-P588E/R - Atom Z520 1.33 GHz - 8" TFT

Sony Vaio P Series VGN-P19WN/Q - Atom Z520 1.33 GHz - 8" TFT (firewire maybe)

Sony VAIO C1 PictureBook PCG-C1MHP - TM5800 867 MHz - 8.9" TFT (firewire port for external cd drive might/might not be standard firewire port)


I've just bought a Motion M1400 for £60 on ebay which has no operating system and I don't know if it will even work.
My target is to record 4 tracks simoultaneously at 24bit/88.2khz
Everyone always recommends getting the fastest hard drive/cpu/most ram, but all I am interested in is something that can record a few tracks fairly reliably and no more (my current P4/3ghz/1gb/5400rpmhd equium handles 4 tracks@24bit/88.2khz no probs).
I'm not recording Pavarotti with the London philharmonic for the BBC, it's just me playing my geet.
I use my PC for mixing/vst effects etc., and I have a very limited budget.
I know that recording large amounts of data doesn't take much cpu involvement, it's mostly down to how the unit handles the data stream to the drive.
I've been using computers for music recording/mixing since my atari ste, I'm fairly confident that an old shitty computer can handle recording a few tracks at once.

I'll let you know how I get on with the motion m1400, I'll be making it a dedicated recorder so will look at a minimal operating system and reaper to record.
(I found out reaper is one of the least cpu intense recording programs).

Cheers

Craig

thansk man!

iain