targa laptop

borg · Post by **borg** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 7:07 pm

anybody knows this brand 'targa'? are they any good?

i came across an ad for one of these machines:
athlon 1,5Ghz
512Mhz ram (siemens)
40Gb hd (toshiba)
tv out
cd-rw/dvd
windows XP installed (+nero/other (video) software)
15" screen
the usual slots/connections/modem

it's less than 1800€ new, 2 year warranty

anybody can comment on this one? i'll be mainly using it to run ableton Live.

it's a one time opportunity in a supermarket. they just have one badge, and they sell quickly! they're in the store wednesday morning. so any replies, please before tuesday night 24th of september 2002

thanks.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 7:24 pm

must be the thing German LIDL store announced for 28. August and withdraw because of 'quality problems'.
The story was covered in Chips mag. They comment that it's not a bargain at all, a comparable unit is easy to get. Said to be a bit slow because of shared memory graphics.
Imho supermarkets NEVER have anything for customer's advantage, but they are great in faking such offers and creating hype.

my 2 cents, Tom

algorhythm · Post by **algorhythm** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 7:41 pm

Andy -

Astroman hit on some things I wanted to mention, such as video card and shared memory graphics. But also: What motherboard/chipset? *Generally* speaking, Athlon laptops are not great for audio due to chipset reasons and general cost reduction shortcuts. Finally, that is not that great of a price at any rate. I think that you can get a better deal if you shop around. Even a US ebay auction might be OK if they'll do international shipping. you'll pay out the ass for the shipping, but still might save in the long run . . .

FYI - they just have one 'batch' - 'badge' is an identification tag, and 'batch' is a quantity of something.

borg · Post by **borg** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 8:14 pm

i'm happy that i popped the question. yes, it is the LIDL thing. well, let's keep searching then.
so far, i've been recommended the toshiba satelites, sony vaio, and dell. ibm thinkpads seem to be winners as well.

thanks a lot, although a bit disappointed. i was really excited. some friends are very happy with their ALDI computer, but they're also happy with their soundblaster.
you can't get something for nothing...

algorhythm · Post by **algorhythm** » Fri Sep 20, 2002 9:04 pm

watch out for the earlier PIII Dells - there is a bug where when the CPU fan turns on, it halts all peripheral activity = severe audio glitches. avoid these . . .

I'm getting a toshiba satellite

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Sat Sep 21, 2002 11:43 am

The Dell fan problem was fixed in a BIOS update (for the Dell 8000/8100 anyway). I'm happily running a magma/Pulsar setup with my Dell 8100 with no problems. Dell and IBM are the only laptops I would personally recommend for audio.

peace

borg · Post by **borg** » Mon Sep 23, 2002 11:30 am

looking at the 'live performance test' thread on the ableton forum, it seems athlon processors are the winners. dell seems to be one of the most popular laptops over there...

good to hear magma and pulsar make a good team! i'm thinking in that direction as well. a bit too pricy for now... how about pci performance (verb/delay)? and connecting it to a desk top?

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Sep 24, 2002 1:27 pm

On 2002-09-23 12:30, borg wrote:
looking at the 'live performance test' thread on the ableton forum, it seems athlon processors are the winners. dell seems to be one of the most popular laptops over there...

Yes, my desktop AthlonXP 1800+ performs amazingly well... however, I think that maybe they get a bit too hot for mobile use. Maybe some AMD laptop owners could prove me wrong though?

good to hear magma and pulsar make a good team! i'm thinking in that direction as well. a bit too pricy for now... how about pci performance (verb/delay)? and connecting it to a desk top?

It's a nice direction to head in. I'm running a 2-slot magma (CB2S) with 2 Pulsar1's (you can see a full description of my setup in the Tech Forum thread "Creamware user setups"), and I know another guy using a 1-slot with a Pulsar2.

I haven't really run any serious reverb tests, but I don't think it would have as much muscle as a desktop system for this. However, I'm not sure about this, maybe I'll do some more concrete tests sometime (too busy working on music right now). However the magma+pulsar combo runs exactly as it did on my CUSL2 system, to my eyes so far. I had a session a couple of weeks ago, the magma+pulsars plugged into an RME DSP PCMCIA system, using the RME as a ADC/DAC and piping everything into the Pulsars over adat, using Pulsar ASIO with Logic 5.2. Performance was flawless.

And yeah I believe you can connect the magma box to a normal desktop machine by buying a PCI card for the desktop.

peace

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samplaire · Post by **samplaire** » Tue Sep 24, 2002 1:55 pm

My brother's got a Toshiba satelite (PIII 450 or so, 3 years old) - he uses it at his work a lot and sais it works perfectly - no hangs, no trouble, batteries are long lasting etc. His work is a circe fi=400km and the computer is always with him. Only advantages.

_________________
Sir SamPlaire

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2002-09-24 14:57 ]</font>