Laptop recommendations? - Digital DJ Tips

This topic has 28 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 14 years, 8 months ago by Phil Morse.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 28 total)

1 2 →

Author

Posts
June 22, 2011 at 7:04 pm #53

DJ GRE
Member

Running traktor pro 2 – the only thing I would say is definitely stay away from anything with less than 3gbs of ram. I switched recently to a Mac beacuse my PC had 3gbs of usable RAM and could not be upgraded and it was way too slow – keep in mind I had hollowed my pc out to pretty much just be running traktor… mixed in key and all of that was run on a seperate laptop… I had it crash a couple times on gigs which is petrifying. My old stats were: HP Compaq presario, running windows vista, 64 bit os, 4gbs installed ram – about 3gbs usable. from what I’ve seen a lot of djs I know (not using macs mind you) are using either a vaio or a dell. Hope I’ve helped!

June 22, 2011 at 8:01 pm #66

DjSpekz
Member

I’m running an HP with 3gb of ram and hopefully going to atleast 5-6gbs this summer. I can’t complain much since I stuffed Traktor Pro 2 into my laptop knowing it wasn’t going to work flawlessly but after switching to Traktor I has only crashed once and I had my iPod already connected to the mixer.

Like GRE said, try to look for something 3-4 and higher if you want to work with traktor and also a Duo Core chip with 2.3 and up.

June 23, 2011 at 8:04 pm #176

DJ Crysix
Member

I am also looking for a Laptop for my birthday this summer, I turn 16 this July and my budget is about $500 – $600, I know it’s tight :S but my parents won’t even consider a laptop over $700

June 23, 2011 at 8:10 pm #177

DjSpekz
Member

@DjCrysix, I have the HP G62 which In my opinion has the minimum specs to work fine. I have VDJ and TP2 working fine on it and it cost me $500.

June 23, 2011 at 9:10 pm #192

D-Jam
Participant

I’m not sure what’s available in Europe.

For me, I generally recommend Lenovo Thinkpads first, then Toshiba laptops second. HP I hear gets a lot of praise, but I haven’t used one in a long time.

Whatever you do, get solid hardware. £500 is about $750 USD here, so I’d probably check out Lenovo or Toshiba as they are a guarantee of solid hardware. That or go after a used Macbook if you like Apple.

Max out the ram and try to get a clean install of the OS. I usually think a lot of the factory-loaded OSes are filled with bloat and thus don’t run well. I’ll always spend the extra on a full copy of Windows so I know it’s clean.

June 24, 2011 at 8:38 am #236

Digitall DJ
Member

Thanks guys, some good points there – especially the RAM being the critical element (we tend to be blinded by processor specs).
I appreciate the appeal of Macs, but resent the over-inflated pricing! I am swayed towards the Sony Vaio series, but no-one has mentioned them. D-Jam has gotr me thinking that my IBM Thinkpad has never let me down, so maybe Lenovo should be up there.
A serious bit of web-surfing required now!

June 24, 2011 at 1:53 pm #1000351

jorn
Member

Whatever you pick, please please please try to ensure that it’s dedicated to DJ’ing. I mean, if you can.

June 24, 2011 at 1:58 pm #1000354

DJ Crysix
Member

jorn, post: 281 wrote: Whatever you pick, please please please try to ensure that it’s dedicated to DJ’ing. I mean, if you can.

How can you tell if a Laptop is “dedicated” to DJ’ing? I’ve never really heared of such a thing.
Could you please elaborate?

June 24, 2011 at 2:16 pm #303

jorn
Member

What I mean is that you only use it for DJing and nothing else. 🙂

June 24, 2011 at 3:14 pm #322

D-Jam
Participant

I actually use my laptop for other things than DJing.

The trick is to know what you put in, so there aren’t any prorams in the back end slowing it all down. I’ll actually disconnect the wireless and turn off the antivirus before I play.

If you use Windows, use the freeware cleaner CCleaner to clean out your hard drive and registry before playing. I’ll even defragment the hard drive as well.

I urge Windows users just to take the time and learn how to streamline your system so you can use the laptop for multiple purposes.

June 24, 2011 at 6:00 pm #397

Michael Crenshaw
Participant

My choice would be the Toshiba Qosmio X500-Q930. It has everything you need.
http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/qosmio/X500/X500-Q930X

June 26, 2011 at 6:48 am #706

Andrea Negri
Member

MacBookPro in my opinion is the right choice, also an used one.

June 26, 2011 at 8:37 pm #809

Darren Johnston
Member

I was having a few problems with my old HP laptop using my S4. I downloaded and run a program called Game Booster and let it close all the programs running I didn’t need at the time. Traktor has run pretty smoothly since

June 27, 2011 at 10:42 am #935

Alex Wild
Participant

I recently moved from a HP to a MBP, which I got 2nd hand for £650 (dont know this in $$s) and I’m really glad I did.
It runs TP2 perfectly and feels like its got a lot of power left over. It’s a 2.53GHz Dual Core2Duo with 4G ram 2009 unibody.

June 27, 2011 at 10:46 pm #1000488

Arthol Gibson
Participant

Digitall DJ, post: 225 wrote: I am swayed towards the Sony Vaio series, but no-one has mentioned them…

I used to be a sony fan myself but I find that alot of their options are proprietary and they can weigh heavily on crunch-time performance. With vaios too.. if you opt to do a clean install of the OS like D-Jam suggested you can lose alot of the functionality and in a few instances OS-specific drivers can be hard to come by. These findings are a few years old but are just a heads up.

I currently have a Toshiba Satellite with 4gb of RAM. Hasnt made me swear during a gig yet 🙂
Author

Posts