Need a powerful laptop to record your stuff going mobile? The best laptop for music production… this is possible but don’t get stuck with the wrong choice. There’s good ones, there’s really bad ones that’ll give you nothing but headaches.

Like a lot of home studio guys I went mobile a few years ago by switching from my desktop to a Laptop computer.

A few years ago the only choice to do some serious recording at home was on a big desktop, that was the only way you’d have enough power to run your music software. Some computer manufactures have recently put out laptops that can rival some of the desktop models for speed and power, allowing us to use them finally for recording music.

Obviously when we talk about the best laptop for music we’re not talking about some model that has some killer built-in speakers! Laptop music recording is what we’re getting at here so let’s see what makes the difference:

You can’t spend $500 on the same computer a school kid does and expect to have a powerful recording machine. These days, a decent laptop will have these kind of specs; intel core i3 2.26 GHz processor, 14″ Display, 4GB of RAM, a SATA 5400 RPM Hard Drive. And almost no external ports other than a few USB ports.

Now look and compare that to the Rok Box Laptop:

Intel Core i5 2.40GHz (520) Processor, up to 8GB of RAM, SATA2 7200rpm Hard Drive, 15.6″ Display. You’re gonna need more than a few USB ports for a music recording machine, like:1 eSATA port, 2 Firewire 400 ports, 3 USB ports, 2 channel HD audio with 3D stereo enhanced sound system

When you’re running a good music recording program these are key features that’ll make a huge difference..

Hard Drive speed of 7200 is mandatory for most recording software programs, faster processor, double the RAM (very important), and of course the extra ports, especially Firewire.

The PCAudioLab Rok Box is a laptop for music production and rivals some of the Rok Box desktop models which were also designed specifically with music production in mind‚Ķ but hey, we’re goin’ mobile!

Jonathan Coulton: A Laptop Like You

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