Best windows laptop for £400 to £500 ?

Did you consider getting a relatively young used MacBook? If it’s only for DJ-ing I would certainly recommend looking into it. And, as I have said before, I am NOT a big Apple fan. Everything I have by way of business laptop and production PC’s is windows-based. But for DJ-ing I bought a mid-2011 MBP 15″ last year and never looked back.

Give me a few mins while I compile a few things…You want a laptop that you can take to gigs with you or something strictly for Trakor and Ableton Live 9? Do you have need for usb 3.0 or a cd drive for that matter? Is resolution going to be an issue because 15 inchers that can do 1080p can get a little hefty for price.

The biggest things I get from your list is that, you need a “Business” end laptop with atleast 8gb of RAM. Business end laptops tend to have been build with an aluminium chases and will last out while transporting better. They usually have the TFT Matted Screens and are great against glare and are easier on the eyes. They usually have the little nob in middle of the keyboard if that’s what you’re looking for. I guess what I’m trying to get at is what kind of features do you need or want and what do you plan on using it or where for that matter.

Your £500 is like 900 cdn over here atm and I’ll see if I can link you a few things. PM me or something and maybe I’ll be able to narrow down my searches to your demographics.

(btw I was a computer sales person from Best buy…one of the best might I add but the rewards weren’t good enough)

-DJ Klusk
Grant

Hey Rick,

The Lenovo is a good choice imho. Guessing you will be going for the i5 version. A slight upgrade in RAM-memory (go 8GB if possible) would be good. As would an SSD. The latter is the biggest speed boost you can give an existing machine.

About the Mac. OSX is more like windows than it is like iOS, so that shouldn’t be what stops you. Both Ableton and Traktor run on OS X as does office (I have Office 365 running on mine). Hope that answers that question for you.

Greetinx.

The thing with SSDs is that they offer the highest performance gain when used as systems/programs disk. So, you’d want at least windows and ableton on the SSD. Might cut it up into two partitions. One for system and the other for producing related data, like samples.

Greetinx.

Rick, that is the beauty of Apple. You don’t need to “have a clue” cos it just works straight out the box.

The “beauty” of the (windows) PC in my opinion is that you can tweak it to your liking and use ANY piece of third-party gear with it. Also you can stick any kind of windows on any kind of hardware, where Apple has a tendency to stop supporting older hardware after only a few years. And this is a major advantage, imho.

BUT … proper setup and maintanance for a windows PC is not an easy feat if you don’t know diddly about computers. Combined with all the other reasons Apple stands out as a music/dj machine, makes for a very attractive package for DJ/Producers (and sound engineers, but that’s another story).

So, while I agree with PC’s being able to run smooth, stable and glitch-free, I have to admit that it takes a whole lot more work and knowledge to get there than it would with a Mac.

Hence even my support for Mac in this specific segment.

Greetinx.