I need help finding a laptop

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Hey:
Do you know where I can find a cheap laptop, maybe with Vista, that has a large screen and good for creating and editing and playing videos and movies, and efficient performance for multiple video editing softwares?

Also, is Vista a good idea for this?

Using a laptop for video editing is either bending the purpose of a laptop or hobbling the performance of the software. Any time you want to use a device outside the parameters of its design, you can forget about the concept of cheap.

Laptops almost universally feature integrated graphics, an item that is not conductive to intense graphics usage. Good graphics hardware in a laptop will massively increase the price of said laptop. Integrated graphics in laptops share memory with the applications, so video editing can hobble display performance.

Multiple video editing programs? I hope you don't mean to run them simultaneously. As Fuzzy already said, the task is rather daunting on a laptop unless you shell out for discrete graphics (though recently laptops with discrete graphics have come down in price) and the type of set-up you'd be talking about would have abysmal battery life. For screen, I think 17" is about as big as they come in laptops. Is this sufficient for what you intend to do?

How cheap do you mean by cheap? That will be a significant factor, as your desired specs are the ones that drive prices up.




No, Vista is not a good idea for anything. However, if you buy a new Windows machine now, I believe you get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out this fall, so you don't lose too much. But I think Mac has traditionally been the platform of choice for video work. The problem there is that you would need the MacBook Pro to really do this (the standard MacBook has a cheap graphics card) and that can get pricey. Your best bet is probably to look for a used/refurbished MacBook Pro from the previous generation. You'll get most of the performance and power of the current generation, but at a steep discount. If you still need Windows, either Virtualbox or BootCamp can permit you to have that on a Mac.

WARNING!

SYNTAX ERROR Descriptor 'vista' found in statement 'good idea'
Redo from Start....

Yup, 'cheap laptop' and 'video editing' aren't completely incompatible concepts, but it would be quite a challenge.

Nowadays, you can get a 'cheap laptop' (relatively speaking - $300 and up, see 'nebook'), but they're not going to be able to handle that kind of load...

I'll give you a f'r'instance:

We had a situation where we wanted to break down each nights news broadcasts into clips, and store them in a database with keyword search.

We have a PVR that writes MPEG2 video files and a requirement for the output from the process to be WMV files.

Converting a half hour of MPEG2 to WMV on this laptop takes up to an hour. On the shiny new Dell box we've just started to use it takes about 6 minutes. Makes a lot of difference.

The as-new cost of the laptop was more (yes, I know, it was a couple of years ago) than the Dell, although the tax break was different.

I would go for a HP Pavillion Entertainment laptop. A friend yesturday picked up one for $599. It had a Core 2 Duo Processor w/ 4GB RAM, 17" Monitor, Nvidia Graphics and Vista Premium 64-Bit Edition.The laptop was pretty good in terms of performance and graphics. I was able to record webcasts and do photoshop fine on the computers.

if it's going to be used for video editing, think first of what software are you going to use. Laptops now are good for editing on the go. If you'll be using Finalcut then get a mac, if premiere, a mac of pc will do. Be sure to get one with Firewire BTW.

You could always get a bleeding desktop, since it looks like you are using it in a work environment. Sure, portability is nice, and you get that with a laptop, but you lose a ton of power when you use a laptop. Having a desktop will probably the faster cheaper option.

Long time reader, first time poster...

Orwell, how can we take your advice as being "serious" when you seem to consistently find ways of belittling Windows Vista? It's hard to tell what's factual and what's just "Orwell on his bandwagon again"

Vista isn't perfect - no operating system is. In fact there's a song out there called "Every OS Sucks", which I think is a pretty accurate description really. They all *DO* suck, just in different ways. The trick I think is to find one that sucks the least for how you want to use it.

To the OP, as others have said, the cheaper the laptop, the less powerful it's going to be. It might be better to spend a little more up-front to get an overall more pleasant user experience. You don't want to saddle yourself with something that's just going to frustrate you.

Having said that, I think a decent mid-range laptop should suit your stated purpose fine. I'd throw as much RAM in it as you can afford though, any intensive type use such as video editing can chew through the RAM like crazy.

Hope this helps.

The simple fact is that Windows Vista causes more problems than other operating systems, and the fact that it is so heavy on resources takes performance away from the machine, making things like video editing harder. You'll notice that I did *not* recommend my own preferred operating system, because it lacks the same multimedia capabilities that Windows and Mac OSX have, and is also probably more of a hassle than the OP wants to deal with. If I were just a mindless Linux fanboy, my recommendation wouldn't have been "OSX, or maybe Windows 7." For my own use, I hate both those systems.


I would say Vista sucks worse than the other current options. And it's a moot point, since almost any new computer from this point will have a free upgrade to Windows 7, so why bother with Vista anymore? Yes, each OS sucks in its own way- hence why I chose not to suggest Linux. Linux sucks at the heavy multimedia stuff. OSX is probably the best for multimedia.


Good advice. Also make sure to get a powerful processor- dual-core would be best, and preferably try to get a 64-bit OS than can take full advantage of powerful hardware.

Is it even possible to buy new generation single cores? And I have an early dual core that is only 32 bit, but I havent seen that limitation ever since.

Otherwise, agreed. Use of 64 bit operating systems will lighten the task of video editing.

The question you must ask yourself is:

Is Vista a good idea at all?