Acer Aspire 4740 as a recording rig?

[curlicue]

I'm currently eyeing an Acer Aspire 4740 --- would anyone have any thoughts regarding this? Use will be mostly for amateur audio recording stuff (because my current *old* 1.6Ghz Pentium-M Twinhead laptop crashes under too much audio processing). Of course there's also the mandatory use for surfing, watching videos, listening to music and maybe the occasional game or two.

I'm new to this Intel Core i3/5/7 thing. It seems to be fast, affordable and I haven't heard anything against its reliability. Is it all that?

Processor
Intel® Core i5-430M processor (3 MB L3 cache, 2.26 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.53 GHz, DDR3 1066 MHz, 35 W), supporting Intel® 64 architecture, Intel® Smart Cache

Chipset
Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset

Screen
14" HD Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD, 16:9 aspect ratio, 8 ms response time

RAM
2GB DDR3, upgradeable to 8 GB using two soDIMM modules (for 64-bit OS)

Storage
500GB HDD

Optical Drive
DVD SuperMulti Double Layer Drive

Communication
Integrated Bluetooth, Integrated Wireless WiFi Link 802.11b/g/Draft-N, Gigabit Ethernet, Wake-on-LAN ready, 56K ITU V.92 with PTT approval12, Wake-on-Ring ready

I/O Interfaces
5-in-1 Media Reader ; HDMI™ port with HDCP support

Graphic
512 MB nVidia GeForce G310M of dedicated DDR3 VRAM, supporting NVIDIA® CUDA™, PhysX™, PureVideo® HD technology, OpenEXR High Dynamic-Range (HDR) technology, Shader Model 4.0, Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1

Audio
3rd Generation Dolby Home Theater, True5.1-channel surround sound output, featuring Dolby® Digital Live, Dolby® Headphone, Dolby® Pro Logic® IIx, Dolby® Audio Optimization, Dolby® High Frequency Enhancer technologies, Dolby® Natural Bass and Dolby® Sound Space Expander

WebCam
Acer Crystal Eye High-Def webcam

[KitC]

I've seen an i5 laptop in action and it is IMPRESSIVE! My problem with the Acer, however, is that it has no firewire leaving you to use usb 2.0 interfaces only. The laptop also does not allow you to add another hard drive, which is important since it is not recommended to record to your system drive. That's why the firewire option is a necessary peripheral so you could have a usb audio interface and firewire hard disk to record on.

[bellhaus]

siguro pwede din bumili firewire card for laptop

[curlicue]

I already bought the laptop last weekend I'm really loving it. So much more powerful. Great audio and video.

KitC, what do you mean when you say that the laptop does not allow you to add another HD? In any case, I save all my projects on my external HD anyway.

As of now, USB2.0 pa lang naman gamit ko. I have no use for firewire yet

[KitC]

KitC, what do you mean when you say that the laptop does not allow you to add another HD?

I've seen some lappies where you can pull out the dvd burner and slide in another hard drive. Some others had enough internal space to accommodate 2 drives, but this is rare nowadays. I could imagine that these laptops can get quite hot. I think toshiba recently developed/released 2.5" drives with 1TB storage quite recently.