Cheap laptop for music making

[Dazzer]

I am looking for a budget priced laptop mainly for basic functions like web browsing, word processing etc, but which hopefully could also be also used for music making.

I am considering something like a Toshiba Satellite Pro L20 Cel-M 360 1.4GHz 512MB 40GB DVD±RW 15" WLAN XP Home. The main problem with music making on PCs is latency. The question is would a 1.4 GHz with 512Mb of ram be fast enough to cope?

Dazzer

[ktkendall]

I'm selling our laptop simply because no one uses it..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6862291585

[Dazzer]

Looks good but I'm in the UK

[ktkendall]

Basically what I would suggest is to go for 1G of ram and stay away from the celeron processor, go with full P4 or athlon64 processor and it will surely meet your needs.. Like everything you get what you pay for, and every PC with a celeron that I've worked with left a bit to be desired as far as quickness and responsiveness..

[mairving]

I am looking for a budget priced laptop mainly for basic functions like web browsing, word processing etc, but which hopefully could also be also used for music making
That's a bit like saying that you need a budget priced Ford Escort to drive at Daytona.

Stay away from the Celeron. Best to go with the Pentium-M, clock speed is not all that important. Go with at least 1GB of RAM and a faster 7,200rpm and larger HD (80GB).

[Dazzer]

I notice AMD Semprons seem to be cheaper than Intel Centrinos. What should I be looking for in AMDs and what should I avoid, like "Stay away from the Celeron" suggested above.

D

[glc]

There are 2 ways to get laptops - with designed mobile processors or with desktop processors. These days, desktop processors are not desirable - they run hot and suck up batteries big time. The Celeron-M is Intel's entry-level mobile processor, the mobile Sempron is AMD's. I don't have any exact comparison data here. The next step up is the Pentium-M and the mobile Athlon 64. If the choice is between the Celeron-M and the mobile Sempron, I'd probably get the Sempron in spite of my biases, but I'll take a Pentium-M over a mobile A64. In my opinion, the AMD Turion is the best competition for the Pentium-M.