Monroe wrote:
A bit of a general query. I'm interested in those of you using stock
laptops/notebooks for DAW use.

This question seems to come up every few months and there's never a
concensus. Usually one person sticks his neck out and mentions the
brand and model that he bought and has had success with, The discussion
then branches out to questions about that computer with few if any
other models discussed. Then it dies. And a few months later (as is
typical in this business) that model is no longer available. I think
lastly the Dell Inspiron 6000 was discussed, and that's still on the
web site.

Just for fun, I tried "configuring" one on line, got hung up with an
error message I couldn't decode (it had to do with the $95 extra
accident protection warranty, a good idea with a laptop that you're
actually going to carry around with you) but it was up around $1600 at
that point. And I'm still not sure what I'd be getting.

Some people have said "If you can afford it, buy an H-P" but without
any specific recommendations. I haven't searched HP's web site to get
details (expected to be fuzzy at best) but whenever I'm in Circuit City
or Best Buy, I look over the laptops, and I see plenty of HPs that look
like Compaqs (which nobody recommends) that have a different case and
more buttons for playing CDs and DVDs without booting the computer
first. I don't see any advantage to using something like that for
audio.

Dude, you're screwed. You simply can't make an informed decision on
this. You just have to take your chances. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Sometimes you just get unlucky. Fortunately you get lucky (and your
audio works) most of the time.