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.