New laptop help

closed

stitching video together is a trivial task for a modern machine, encoding/converting to a different format can take a few minutes, but how often are you going to actually do it whilst watching the clock, just leave it running in the background until it's finished

dedicated graphics card/vast amounts of ram/I7 are ott.

Lisaberry

I'm so confused! I'm getting that I should definitely get I7 from some, than I5 is a minimum from others and i3 is more than enough from others still.
Obviously I want to get the best that I can for my budget but don't want to spend more than I have to. If I don't need to stretch the budget to £600 then I'd rather not. However, I don't want to get 6 months down the line and it start to lag.
I'm surprised how difficult I'm finding this!

redcard

ministe2003 wrote: »

I'm not directly comparing a mac to a £500 Wintel machine, I've never even heard of Wintel so I'm certainly not comparing that brand to Apple but spec wise, my point stands - you'll almost always pay an awful lot more for an Apple than you would for an equivalent spec non-apple machine.

This is complete rubbish.

Find me a Macbook Air equivalent that costs less.
Find me a Macbook Pro equivelant that costs less.

I bet you don't.

redcard

Lisaberry wrote: »

I'm so confused! I'm getting that I should definitely get I7 from some, than I5 is a minimum from others and i3 is more than enough from others still.
Obviously I want to get the best that I can for my budget but don't want to spend more than I have to. If I don't need to stretch the budget to £600 then I'd rather not. However, I don't want to get 6 months down the line and it start to lag.
I'm surprised how difficult I'm finding this!

The most important thing is the CPU. Forget the memory and the storage - you can always upgrade that if necessary. Anyway, most base laptops will probably suffice anyway.

Also need to remember that not all Core i5s are created equal. They are in their 4th generation. So you think you're getting a bargain, but the i5 CPU could be 2-3 years old. I think the cheaper laptops from Argos / PC World etc probably use these to cut costs.

closed

how many times in a year do you encode video, how long does it take each time on your existing machine, and how long did it take the first time on your existing machine, what are you using to convert/encode with? Which operating system is installed, how much ram is installed, what security software is installed, post a hijackthis log.

you say the machine is slow, was it always slow, if not, then backup and factory restore then it won't be slow.

Lisaberry

closed wrote: »

how many times in a year do you encode video, how long does it take each time on your existing machine, and how long did it take the first time on your existing machine

you say the machine is slow, was it always slow, if not, then backup and factory restore then it won't be slow.

It was the cheapest one in the shop when I bought it (all I could afford at the time) and has been a brick with a power lead since day 1.

I don't do much video editing at the mo so I know I don't need top spec bells and whistles but I would like to do more than I do now - I know full well if it's slower than my childhood Commodore 64 tape deck I'll get fed up and not bother

Lisaberry

redcard wrote: »

The most important thing is the CPU. Forget the memory and the storage - you can always upgrade that if necessary. Anyway, most base laptops will probably suffice anyway.

Also need to remember that not all Core i5s are created equal. They are in their 4th generation. So you think you're getting a bargain, but the i5 CPU could be 2-3 years old. I think the cheaper laptops from Argos / PC World etc probably use these to cut costs.

Lol, go and make it more difficult why don't you
Think I'll go buy a typewriter and a VHS camera and be done with it!

Lisaberry

closed wrote: »

you avoided all the pertinent questions

I have no idea how long it took 4 years ago, long enough that I was annoyed.
WMM has always been almost impossible to use, editing is impossible as it's all choppy in editing mode and half the time the clips won't even finish saving as it crashes.

I haven't attempted to do anything like that on it for about a year. I just have an external hard drive full of stuff waiting to be done.

I'm still also looking for a windows solution for editing .mov.

closed

all sounds like software problems, factory restore and find out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+900+%40+2.20GHz

TheSaint_2

An i5 will do you. The i7 is not much of an improvement for the cost.
Try to get one with a dedicated graphics card - look for NVIDIA or ati in the spec. You need at least 4gh of ram. The hard disk is not important, but as you are using an external hard disk for storage you need usb3 and you may need to upgrade your external disk IE buy a new one that is also usb3.
don't buy Sony... they are all show and no substance. To be fair £500 won't get you much. You must get the 4gh ram though. It will massively improve performance overall.