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I may get a new (used) laptop!

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superboyac:
I've been begging a friend to sell me his laptop for months now, and he finally may do it.  You see, I've wanted a laptop for a long time, but could never really afford it, especially considering I want some quality components, not just the regular budget Dell.  The laptop will serve two purposes...a multimedia player to connect to the TV and watch DVD's, videos, etc.  And also my musician software so I can play VST instruments with my keyboard at gigs.

Anyway, I'm excited.  Look what I get for $650:

Acer Aspire (I forgot the model)  it's maybe 1.5-2 years old
Pentium M 1.4 or 1.6 (I can't remember)
ATI 256 mb card
100 gb hard drive
2 gb RAM
wide screen (15" some wierd resolution like 1,680 x 1,050)
DVDR drive
all the wifi stuff built in
+bonus 80 gb portable usb drive

I know it's a great deal, I can't wait!  I've never had a laptop besides an 5-year-old, broken Compaq that will crash after 1 hour continuous use (my brother in law gave it to me).

nudone:
let us know how you get on with the vst instuments - you may still need a decent soundcard to avoid latency - i found that it depends on the instrument.

other than that, it looks like a great deal - 2 gig of ram adn a 256 meg graphics card can't be bad (plus the rest).

superboyac:
Oh, the vst instruments should be fine.  I use another sound card for my musician software...the Echo Indigo IO.  I know there are other things out there, but I like the Echo because it fits in the pcmcia slot.

I didn't know there were other people here who used vst software...I have a whole lot of discussion in me about those!  I love em.  VST completely blows away any of the soundbanks on the pro keyboards.  The only problem is that you need to lug a computer or laptop with you to use it and it's not as easy as just turning the on switch.  But if you could streamline the process as an actively gigging musician, the results are well worth it.

nudone:
unfortunately, i can't really say anything interesting about vst instruments as i never seem to have much time to use the ones i've got. for me, making music is always on the 'to do' list and has been that way for about the past 20 years. even though the rise of cubase means it's even more convenient to have a go at knocking something together i still haven't completed anything.

i rushed out and bought steinberg the grand when it came out a few years ago - i ended up selling it a few months back because i never used it - i haven't rushed out to buy the grand 2 - yet.

what's the sort of music that you are doing, superboyac? my intention is still to do something heavily electronic based - sort of boards of canada at their most retro and rythmic - i grew up on vangelis and tangerine dream and tubeway army (numan) so vst instruments are made for what i'm aiming at.

jgpaiva:
That looks like a good buy (depending on the price, of course ;) ).
I am a acer user myself, and have also had a compaq laptop. Both top of the line (at least, in my country :( ).
Compaq (HP), has the best support i've ever seen, my computer broke down, and they came to my house to get it, and returned it to me 3 days later, as good as new, and i didn't pay anything at all, no problems. So, it's hard for me to not prefer HP.
My acer is noticeably not as good as an HP, it has less than a year and the outer case has cracks, and seems to break at any time. Plus, it has issues with temperature, it keeps turning the cooler on for no reason at all. But the acer support has been very kind to me, i forgot to activate the warranty extension within the limit time, and they let me activate it now (about 7 months after the end of the period for activation).

My computer is not as good as the one you refer, and i thinks that's a great machine. (Isn't it the aspire 1692wlmi? i think it's the version above mine).
One thing i advise you is to try out that definition of possible. A friend of mine uses it, and has to increase windows font size, and has to be always increasing the zoom on the web pages. Personally, i like the fact that it ads much more workspace to the desktop, but i can't use it because it's bad for the eyes.

I hope i've been able to help ;)

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