Anyone recording to the tiny laptops with Intel Atom?

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 10:29 pm

The little netbooks by Lenovo, Acer, et al are very very portable and very very cheap. People on the Sonar forum mentioned that some can hold 7200 rpm hard drives.

Anyone here actually using one of these for daw or soft synths?

desdinova · Post by **desdinova** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:32 pm

I've used an MSI Wind for it. These machines have more grunt than the Thinkpad (P4) I usually use.
The only problems on any of the netbooks are the ridiculous screen res, usually horrible keyboard, and SSD/funky HDD placement.

Just watch out for models with hard to replace drives and make sure your UI won't be useless at their resolutions. They're killer machines, and most are silent.
Only a few have expresscard slots, so you're limited to USB interfaces unless you want to pay for that premium.

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:54 pm

haven't picked one up but I've been following them over the last few months.

That Lenovo seems to be the bees knees, if only because it has an expresscard slot. Asus will be launching one with an expresscard slot as well in the near future, and I think Dell might have one out already. Expresscard would really help, since you could get a real firewire port / eSATA or do all kinds of fun stuff. I know they're a smaller-than-usual expresscard slot, so I'm not sure if things like the UAD would be compatible.

Most of them do 1024x768, which is a big problem. Newer ones are starting to hit the scene that do higher res than that. Wait for those - my current laptop (a Fujitsu tablet) only does 1024x768 and it is a limitation. Most GUIs aren't designed to scale to that resolution and there are things in certain DAWs (Cubase mostly) that I haven't rendered right.

Basically, you're looking for any models that hold 2.5" hard drives, since that's the normal laptop form factor. I picked up a 320gig 7200rpm laptop drive for about $80 a month or so ago without shopping around at all.

desdinova · Post by **desdinova** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:40 pm

Even worse, man, most do 1024x600. Everything needs to be ~widescreen~ these days, nevermind that you're taking vertical resolution. I blame television.

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 7:06 pm

Thanks for the feedbacks folks.

When I finally have money again, I really want to try this. Something as small as a digital multitrack, but with plug-ins, midi, and editing on a screen . . . albeit a tiny one.

Desdinova -- What's "SSD/funky HDD placement" mean? I'm not recognizing those abbreviations, prob'ly something obvious . . .

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:04 am

I'm curious about these too, mainly for a travel notebook but recording would be a bonus. Maybe I need to reconsider the Windows vs. Linux debate for the Asus ones.

percussion boy wrote:Desdinova -- What's "SSD/funky HDD placement" mean? I'm not recognizing those abbreviations, prob'ly something obvious . . .

"Solid State Drive", aka flash disk. "Hard Disk Drive", which would be much bigger capacity but also draw power, make a little noise, etc. And maybe be difficult to replace in a netbook.

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:14 am

TapeOp Andy wrote about using one of those tiny Sony PCs for recording, but the price tag was pretty steep (>$2K, IIRC). This will be an interesting niche.

desdinova · Post by **desdinova** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 7:42 am

kayagum wrote:tiny Sony PCs.

They still make them, sony picturebooks. Although I think they're now just called the Sony P-series. They've come down in price a little bit, but they're still much more expensive than your average netbook. A lot more capable though. Fujitsu makes similar machines in the Lifebook line.

Scodiddly had it right on.

DJ_LBP · Post by **DJ_LBP** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:51 pm

I'd be interested to try one just to run a couple instruments with a midi controller. to still be able to use my laptop to record, not having to tax it more with software instruments.

joederschlagzeuger · Post by **joederschlagzeuger** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:15 pm

I got the Lenovo Ideapad SE10e. I love it, it's such fun to be able to carry a little computer around without the hassle of a full sized laptop. It has the Atom 1.6 and one gig of RAM & Windows XP.

The express card slot took my firewire adapter so I hooked it up to my Presonus Firebox and recorded 8 tracks of audio to Reaper (to an external USB HD). It all seemed to work pretty well and I even did a little mix with Reaper's built in effects.

I also managed to play back several existing sessions with 12-16 tracks which worked fine as long as the plugins were turned off.

The only problem I had was that the express card bus and the Wifi really didn't seem to get on to the extent that I had to turn off the Wifi and restart to get the audio to work. Since I would never try to record with Wifi running on any machine, it's not a big deal, although the restart is abit of a pain.

I am hoping to borrow a USB interface to check that out.

I am guessing that with an OS working with the bare minimum of clutter, this machine will make a nice little mobile recording device. Maybe an extra gig of memory would help it along some.

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 2:48 pm

joederschlagzeuger wrote:I got the Lenovo Ideapad SE10e. I love it, it's such fun to be able to carry a little computer around without the hassle of a full sized laptop. It has the Atom 1.6 and one gig of RAM & Windows XP.

The express card slot took my firewire adapter so I hooked it up to my Presonus Firebox and recorded 8 tracks of audio to Reaper (to an external USB HD). It all seemed to work pretty well and I even did a little mix with Reaper's built in effects.

I also managed to play back several existing sessions with 12-16 tracks which worked fine as long as the plugins were turned off.

The only problem I had was that the express card bus and the Wifi really didn't seem to get on to the extent that I had to turn off the Wifi and restart to get the audio to work. Since I would never try to record with Wifi running on any machine, it's not a big deal, although the restart is abit of a pain.

I am hoping to borrow a USB interface to check that out.

I am guessing that with an OS working with the bare minimum of clutter, this machine will make a nice little mobile recording device. Maybe an extra gig of memory would help it along some.

That little Lenovo really seems to be the one - is the hard disk a regular 2.5" laptop drive, or is it an iPod type (I think they're 1.8")?

EDIT: I should google first. It's a 2.5"! http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/ ... 0-hdd.aspx. Brilliant! I grabbed a 320gb 7,200 RPM drive for like $70 off Newegg a month or so ago. That'd do 8 tracks in its sleep. Might need to consider it for the mobile recording rig I want to build after my mic locker gets filled out.

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Anyone recording to the tiny laptops with Intel Atom?

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