Stazbumpa

Gaming laptop for DJ purposes os a waste of money. You need an i5 CPU, 4-8gb RAM and a SSD at least 256gb in capacity. And usb ports :-/
Everything else is superfluous and costs more.

If it’s a Windows machine then demand you get the OS disc with the laptop because the first thing you will be doing is wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Windows from scratch to get rid of any bloat ware or other junk that comes preinstalled on it from the shop.
It’s up to you if you think a Mac is worth the money, they’re nice but they don’t do anything a PC laptop doesn’t do already and they can still crash or go wrong.

Addendum: With regard to the space needed for your music collection, I’ve been gigging most weekends for years doing 5-6 hour sets of multi genre music and my collection is still less than 80gb.

I started learning to beatmatch with pretty much the same stuff you are; hardcore and techno from the early/mid 90’s. All I can add to Vintage’s excellent advice is just keep practising. You will sometimes feel like it’ll never gel, but it does eventually and props to you for wanting to learn.
Even in the digital age, beatmatching by ear is vital simply because beatgrids and bpm counters can fail, your ears won’t 🙂

I went with a refurbished Dell Latitude business laptop, 1080p screen and 4 usb ports for 500 quid. I agree that dropping 2k on a Mac that’s going to be working in an “adverse” environment is probably going to end in tears. Plus there’s nothing a Mac can do that a Windows machine can’t.
I run Windows 7 but afaik there’s no reason not to go for 8.1, you can always run a desktop mod if you don’t like the tile system. An i5 CPU should do you as will 4Gb RAM instead of 8Gb. The key areas though are the SSD (get one!) and a clean Windows install. Those two things are the most important parts of running a Windows laptop for DJ’ing.

That and not downloading a ton of pr0n 😀

I don’t see it as hating new blood, quite the opposite for me personally as I have long history of helping new DJs in my area, but what I do see is a large number of people downloading the Beatport top 100, grabbing a controller and a laptop, hitting the sync button and pretending they’re the new breed.
Any criticism of this is now being called “hating new talent” and “being resistant to change”. If change in DJing means to allow mediocrity to reign then I for one am glad to be resistant to it.

To run a stable Windows machine I would make sure you ask that the vendor give you a copy of the OS on disc so you can wipe your hard drive and reinstall from scratch.
This ensures you have no bloatware or extra programs that every single laptop vendor always installs. You don’t need them so get rid of them.
You won’t need an i7 cpu, an i5 will do fine as will 4gb ram rather than 8gb. Usb 3 is not a requirement, more usb 2 slots is better.
As for the manufacturer I hear good things about Lenovo, Asus is also very good. If possible lose the nvidia graphics simply because you don’t need it, onboard graphics is more than enough for DJing.

Of the 2 options you gave I would choose the Lenovo, but that laptop would be wasted on just DJing. In my humble opinion you would be better served with a less highly spec’d laptop with more usb 2 ports and maybe a 1080p screen.

Just giving you my experience with laptop DJing 🙂

I was in the right place at the right time. I was working in a club doing something else entirely, management knew I liked to DJ, the resident DJ fell out with because money and they asked me if I would do it.
That wad in 1997 and I’ve not had many weekends off since 🙂

It depends on your point of view. If you buy a laptop now and 3 months later look at something newer then your laptop will be slower. But that’s only because you would be comparing older technology with newer.
If you mean that the computer will start to run slower after a period of time all by itself, well that only tends to happen if you don’t look after it.

Mac or PC, if you run lots of background tasks, fill your hard drive up with crap and also don’t bother to clean the fans and heatsinks, then your mac or pc will run slow and crash more as time passes.
Look after it and it will run quite happily for as long as you need it to.

A point worth remembering, ignore the graphics card spec because its irrelevant. On a DJ laptop. Look for upgrades like a solid state drive or a decent 1080p screen instead.

Protip: DJs are like everyone else and tell lies.

As for the technique, such as it is, it’s some I used to do back in my vinyl days but you really needed to know your records backwards to make sure they lined up ok. Today it’s much easier, you use cue points and/or loops and the sync button if you get really stuck.
All it needs then is fading in the next track at the right time for a quick transition.
The cue or loop can be set however many beats before you want the track to come in so you know your timing is spot on.

Dead easy when you know what you’re doing, all it needs is a bit of prep beforehand.