I really can’t have an opinion about the specific controller you are asking but I do have personal experience with i3 laptop.
So, in details, using an HP Pavillion with an i3 CPU, Windows 7 64bit (frankly I was a bit scared about the 64bit part but the laptop manufacturers “shoved” 64bit down our throats whether we wanted it or not, as in there was no other option when I bought the laptop). Truth is I was afraid about 64bit drivers for my controllers more than anything else.
Usage frequency: thats important for you to know – its different hearing “never crashed” from a guy who DJed with his system twice the last year and a guy who DJed 4-6 times a month. My case is the second one: I used to run a weekly live webradio show plus the gigs I have which usually are once a month or so.
So, this laptop has been used for the last 2 years with a BCR 2000 Behringer controller, and two Korg Nano Kontrols running Ableton Live. Add the NI 2 soundcard and when DJing it uses ALL its available USB slots lol.
Now to the interesting part: NEVER, EVER, ever froze or crashed on stage or at bedroom practising.
I have to say though, there was a week where the system did cause audio drop outs (short glitches where the audio out cuts off) – I remember being nuts because I couldnt figure out what had caused it – eventually it was a silly graphics card driver update that Windows update informed me that was available – so my advice to any PC user regarding this issue is: NEVER ever ever update your hardware’s drivers if you are not facing any problems (especially the NVidia ones lol) – the “if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it” mentality couldnt apply more.
*tip for all windows-based laptop users: go to power plans/settings/options of your machine via “control panel” (sorry for inaccurate names-terms, windows translated to Greek here) and find the advanced power options – disable selective/automatic or what its called power cut-off for inactive USB devices – if you don’t the posibility of audio drop outs or freezes is great.
edit: as far as the audio quality concerns and the various info about distorted audio, these are all due to poor understanding of digital signal processing (as oposed to analogue). Most old school DJs were operating their analogue mixers to extremes (“in the reds” we say here in Greece, I don’t know the expression in English). The problem is that audio distortion in analogue sound may be perceived like “warmth” so it might be desirable but in the digital domain it is simple, ugly, nasty distortion. Old school DJs have trouble realising that ANYTHING above 0db in the digital world is strictly forbidden as far as sound quality goes – “reds” in digital is a no go, not a “woah, Im pumping it loud”. You can read more about it in a post of this blog here.
Of course, as Phil already said, with computers its always best to have a back up plan….My own is a couple CDs which I carry with me and put in the club’s CD players, ready to fire in case anything goes wrong with my laptop. I never had to use them up to this day though!
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