(my background..hopefully folks wont take this
as meaning i'm an egotist..just shareing.
but i did 30 yrs in the puter industry.)
if your on a budget and cant afford an i7 puter..
look carefully at a desktop amd 620 quad processor with lots of ram.
and 2 7200 rpm drives with 32 mb cache.
(note the cache level.)
one drive for OS and one for recording to.
normally around 600 buks.
you should be able to do 80 traks with this set up.
BE VERY CAREFULL OF EL CHEAPO LAPTOPS.
in summary ive tested hundreds this year for friends ,
and they are pretty bad imho.
which is due to slow internal drives , chipset issues
with some sound devices and many other factors.
(for proper laptops..but pricey...check out
adkproaudio.com i have zilch to do with em.
just suggesting folks check em out.,)
in summary laptops are a zoo.
which is why many recording forums have so many ..
"my laptop has probs with ...etc etc " threads.
yes they are mobile and YES they look sexy (lol.)
but beware the old adage "beauty is only skin deep".
lots of people are haveing probs.
(i have a ton of tips related to daws , to save me typing reams...
there is a leangthy tips thread of mine called "My tips" at pgmusic.com
in the user forum titled tips n triks.)
before buying any laptop or desktop run this on it..
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtmlone reason i like the budget amd 620 approach is ...
puter processors can get obsolete.
yes the i7 is grrreat...but ITS NOT THE END OF THE STORY..
so you might think bout the useing a 620 now and saveing your money
for major new processor products that will come.
eg 8 and 16 core processors.
hope this helps someone.
god bless.
ps..if however you anticipate useing a TON of resource hogging plug ins..
right now i see the i7 as the only alternative.