Is this the computer I should get?

[CDink]

Ok, i found out the school not only has a production lab......but tons of equipment...but i still want my own camera.......here's what my thoughts were...get


This Computer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220705


and this camera:




and I would only pay like 70 of my own dollars....is that a horrible idea? Both on the camera and the computer?...im aware the computer is an integrated gpu...but i've lived without computer gaming for 18 years, whats 4 more? and the camera has a good review...it seems to be a good start for the price.

[Jungell]

Ok, i found out the school not only has a production lab......but tons of equipment...but i still want my own camera.......here's what my thoughts were...get


This Computer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220705


and this camera:




and I would only pay like 70 of my own dollars....is that a horrible idea? Both on the camera and the computer?...im aware the computer is an integrated gpu...but i've lived without computer gaming for 18 years, whats 4 more? and the camera has a good review...it seems to be a good start for the price.

The camera seems to be good but I'd get another computer. It's been a while since I've tried Asus but the last time I did, I wished I didn't. I'd recommend Dell.

[Niode]

The specs on that laptop are very low. You're going to need a 7200rpm drive for video work, a 5400rpm drive is just going to slow you down immensely.

[Jungell]

I still think that you should go with the Mac, though.

Some people do perfer the PC though and if you're one of them, who am I to argue? We alla like what we like. But if you're getting a PC you need to be really picky and choose the right one. There are so freaking many of them out there and far from all of them are even decent. But I hear that Dell is all right again. I know HP is pretty good, do check those out!

[CDink]

ok...whats this rpm number in reference too...the hard drive speed? And whats the difference between AMD and Intel.....anyway I saw too more...but i think they both have 5400

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834110399


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834114788

and this one is a bit pricier...but has a 7200....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-05202010



the second seems better....i'm only going to be doing light to medium editing...i had managed on this current computer(albeit with....windows movie maker...ugh.) at the moment i have $900 total dollars...but i don't really want to spend ALL my grad money on decent equipment...but i can't afford great...

[Duane Dibbley]

ok...whats this rpm number in reference too...the hard drive speed?

Yes, rpm = revolutions per minute

[Niode]

With video equipment you get what you pay for. There's no way of getting around it. It's all a matter of preference. I find productivity much much higher on macs. We exclusively use Macs at the studio I work at, I can't work to the same speed as I can on windows systems. There's just something about the unified layout of the operating system, everything is in the same place on every single app. All the shortcuts do the same thing in every single application. CMD+, always brings up preferences, CMD+n always creates a new window/page/document/track etc. CMD+w always closes the current window, CMD+q always quits the current app, cmd+z always undo, cmd+y always redo etc etc. Windows just doesn't have this uniformity, it's slowly getting there with the ribbon UI but it's still a long way off the uniformity of OS X. I guess it just comes down to what side of the brain you use the most, most creative people I know prefer macs, more technically minded people I know prefer Windows.

[Ziggy]

Besides RPM's, also find out the buffer (cache) size. 8MB seems very low these days when 16, 32 and even 64MB is available now. I didn't see NewEgg specifying the buffer size on the laptops we were looking at, but it might be worth google'ing to find out the model hard drive in the laptop so you can look up the specs.

Also, you can't solely rely on the RPM specs of a hard drive. More important specs would be the average seek and write times. So to try and make an example of what I'm talking about, you might find a 7200RPM hard drive with an 8MB buffer and slow read/write times, and then find a 5400RPM drive with 32MB buffer and really fast read/write times. The 5400RPM drive would be more desirable.

How often does a 5400RPM drive out perform a 7200RPM drive? I don't know, and probably not often. I just thought it was worth mentioning. Don't assume that just because the hard drive is 7200RPM that automatically means it's a 'better' drive.

[CDink]

Well, I was building a custom laptop on HP's website....I think i was doing it right...i built a pretty sweet PC for around 900....although that leaves little money for a camera.....anyway it had:

Windows 7 premium 64-bit
AMD Turion(TM) II Dual-Core Processor M540 (2.4GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)
3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 4530 IEEE 1394 Firewire and HDMI ports included.
Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) Elements 8 & Adobe Premiere(R) Elements 8


this is for 898.78.....im not too sure if thats what we need for that price though.

[Jungell]

Besides RPM's, also find out the buffer (cache) size. 8MB seems very low these days when 16, 32 and even 64MB is available now. I didn't see NewEgg specifying the buffer size on the laptops we were looking at, but it might be worth google'ing to find out the model hard drive in the laptop so you can look up the specs.

Also, you can't solely rely on the RPM specs of a hard drive. More important specs would be the average seek and write times. So to try and make an example of what I'm talking about, you might find a 7200RPM hard drive with an 8MB buffer and slow read/write times, and then find a 5400RPM drive with 32MB buffer and really fast read/write times. The 5400RPM drive would be more desirable.

How often does a 5400RPM drive out perform a 7200RPM drive? I don't know, and probably not often. I just thought it was worth mentioning. Don't assume that just because the hard drive is 7200RPM that automatically means it's a 'better' drive.

Computers are so confusing. The numbers rarely mean that much.

A friend of mine bought a 1TB external HDD for real low cheap. I never found out the specs of the actual HDD but, read this and laugh, the drive connected to the computer via USB 1!
Why would anybody manufacture such a device?

I have seen a great deal of cheap PC laptops with really good specs in my days. They always turn out to be crap, regardless of the good specs. If it's cheap you can bet your sexy ass (I haven't seen your ass but I bet it's sexy) that they filled that case with nothing but crap. Cheap plastic exterior that will break on you, cheap battery that wont do for "on the go" use and probably wont survive too many charging cycles etc.
So try to find as many reviews of the products that you can. Not just first impressions but see if people have commented on how the computer will work when it's a bit older.