advice on Laptop purchase?

[Dan Hauck]

I'm looking at a very gently used Lenovo Thinkpad T61/ Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit svc pack 1/intel Dual cpu, T7500 2.2 GHz/ 4Gb RAM/ 142 Gb HDD/ with external video monitor & docking station. Any reason not to consider this to replace my antiquated Gateway laptop for mobile recording? If there are no contraindications, would it be advisable to change to XP or is 7 a workable option? Fellow wants me to make an offer. Suggestions for a ballpark figure?

Thanks

Dan Hauck

[jazzboxmaker]

My R61 worked well even without a TI Chipset for firewire. I only upgraded since it chokes on heavy plugin use otherwise it's a decent choice. I opted for XP in the beginning instead of Vista but I'm running W7 x64 now.

We have had a bunch of Thinkpads in my family, they have all been built like tanks and are relatively easy to fix/upgrade.

Ebay is a good source for determining value.

[Bill Park]

Definitely don't go for an IdeaPad. I bought two mid-priced models last year. They blow for audio work, DPCs off the charts. The bottom-dollar Compaq I bought from Walmart handles audio, no problem. So don't stray to save dollars.

[paul kostabi]

My antiquated gateway is still working great.
It might be the vintage gateway sound.

[Dan Hauck]

Mine, too, though the plastic pieces falling off are somewhat embarassing. Anybody know if Win7 will be OK and BTW, are there tweaks specific to Win7 or are the chitlins of 7 similar enough to XP that the same ones will work?

[Brent Evans]

Win 7 has its own set of tweaks, which somewhat overlap with the XP tweaks, but some are different.

[Dave Labrecque]

Mine, too, though the plastic pieces falling off are somewhat embarassing. Anybody know if Win7 will be OK and BTW, are there tweaks specific to Win7 or are the chitlins of 7 similar enough to XP that the same ones will work?

Win7 is very solid for me, Dan. Bob's tweak doc for Win7 is technically meant for SAC, but seems to work well for SAW. You also will want to run SAW's exe in XP SP2 or 3 compatibility mode, which is as simple as a one-time setting in the Properties settings. AND... you will want to turn off two of Win7's default interface settings: "Aero" and "Border Padding" (actually, setting it to zero).

Some say that XP actually performs more efficiently, but with today's CPU's, I sure don't notice any slow-downs. Though, I don't typically have very high track counts.

Truth be told, I imagine Windows 3.1 is probably more efficient than XP, so... a little perspective might be in order. ;)

[Grekim]

Some say that XP actually performs more efficiently, but with today's CPU's, I sure don't notice any slow-downs. Though, I don't typically have very high track counts.

Truth be told, I imagine Windows 3.1 is probably more efficient than XP, so... a little perspective might be in order. ;)

It's an interesting thing, I mean there are different ways to measure progress. You would think efficiency and stability would be at least one of the primary goals of an OS whether now or 10 years ago or ten years in the future. So if efficiency goes down, what do we get in return? Maybe it is more stable, I don't know. I could live with that tradeoff. But, it doesn't take a genius to figure out there must be an extra layer to the code to make things less snappy.
My only experience with 7 so far is on a lab computer. It's at least a 3.0 GHz machine with 4-8 GB RAM. Not something you'd pick up at the local computer warehouse either. It's not bad, but kludgier than my 2.6 GHz Dell running XP...like when you open a folder or something similar.

[Dave Labrecque]

It's an interesting thing, I mean there are different ways to measure progress. You would think efficiency and stability would be at least one of the primary goals of an OS whether now or 10 years ago or ten years in the future. So if efficiency goes down, what do we get in return? Maybe it is more stable, I don't know. I could live with that tradeoff. But, it doesn't take a genius to figure out there must be an extra layer to the code to make things less snappy.
My only experience with 7 so far is on a lab computer. It's at least a 3.0 GHz machine with 4-8 GB RAM. Not something you'd pick up at the local computer warehouse either. It's not bad, but kludgier than my 2.6 GHz Dell running XP...like when you open a folder or something similar.

I'd think there are too many variables to consider that an apples-to-apples comparison. After an OS re-install, my systems always slow down over time, so... :confused: