[Paul[_13_]]

Ok, so I've finally gotten a
decent used Toshiba Satellite A215, with a decent
dual-core processor, and have upgraded from XP to Windows
7, and from Cubase LE4 to Cubase 5. This is my first
laptop, and it's a breeze to turn off the internet with
the hard Wi-fi switch on the front.

Wow, windows 7 is super smooth! It makes XP feel like
the stone ages almost: very fast start-up and shut-down,
much faster and easier file navigation in explorer, etc.

First thing about Cubase 5: it looks like they took
out the "lower latency" option that LE4 had. A good idea,
because that's the main thing that was causing the
horrible digital skipping in LE4 (when you didn't have
it checked). Now it's always on the lowest latency, which
is how it should be.

So I've finally gotten the free CVPiano to work smoothly now, and
it sounds good. There are still audible digital artifacts
during fast, busy, higher # of voices passages, but it's
not too bad. I'm gonna try Synthogy Ivory 1.5 and see how
much better it might be. Actually, some of the Halion pianos
that came with Cubase 5 are NOT THAT BAD. In the end, the choice
of VST will be song dependent, of course.

I'm also gonna try Hauptwerk 4 for organs....