New laptop (SUGGESTIONS!!!)

Seems a little expensive.

I’d personally forgo the i7 for a later model i5 all things being equal. Unless you go crazy with either FX, BPM changes (i.e. lots of keylock working hard), do lots of producing and/or, depending on some other factors, video, the extra processing power isn’t all that necessary. I’d rather get that younger one with possibly a retina screen (especially on a 13″, but that might just be my old eyes talking 😀 ). An SSD already built-in is nice, but it’s easy to either swap yourself or add one in the optical drive bay. Hybrid SSDs are not my favorite. They seem to have the disadvantages of both and not enough of the advantages of either.
Get one with a decent HD and add a 256GB Samsung Evo for not too much money. Upgrade the memory to minimum 8GB or 16GB depending on your budget. More IS better, but I’d have no problem working with an 8GB version.

My current Macbook is (if I recall correctly) a mid-2010 model i5 with only 4GB. I have put in an SSD (just updated from 128GB to 256GB with the prices dropping) and have my request collection on a separate HD. I think it’s still very relevant for DJ-ing. The only reason I am looking to replace is that I can’t get video on the dongle, so I can’t use it for video DJ-ing (no big deal) or presentations (somewhat of a big deal).

I paid about 750 euro for mine when I bought it, then 3 years old or so. It does have a dent in the aluminum housing, which I don’t care about but brings the price down some. I am looking at replacements in the 800-1200 euro range, depending on age, specs and cosmetics.

Final word, it IS a lot of money, but I can still sell mine for quite a few hundred euro’s, being 5 1/2 years old, something I doubt would have worked with a Windows laptop. Point in case, they do hold their value well and perhaps you should look at it from a “per annum write-off” more than a “lump-sum purchase” point-of-view.

If the rest of the hardware in the Dell is still good, I would pop a 250 GB or larger SSD into it and up the RAM and you should be good. I’ve got a 2008 Pentium Dual Processor w/ 4 GB of RAM on it and an OCZ 80 GB SDD running Windows & that I have Traktor Scratch Pro on and it’s never given me any issues. Granted, that particular computer is the one I use when I want to listen to records, nothing more it’s not the one I produce nor spin on, but the point is if I can make it go with something that old if your Dell is a more recent model, and you want to save some $$, all you need to do is upgrade the drive and RAM. If you need assistance, let me know. aarontheis@historaeology.org

Yes, that would work nicely with what you want to do. You probably already know that you cannot increase the RAM, but 16 GB + the cache should be plenty. The only thing I don’t like about it is the two vs. four core i7; I was not aware that they built any with the two core. That would be my hang up. Like I said in the previous past, my very old hp that has a dual core and 4gb ram runs Traktor Scratch Pro well, but I only use it for remote access to other Windows computers if I’m not at home and something comes up I need to fix.

Does anyone have any experience with this processor/RAM combination?

Ah, that’s right, I forgot about that. With 16 GB RAM, I would think he would be alright…