I agree with you on the last post. I was an avid supporter in my area of computer recording for years before it became the mainstay. My interest in my friend's situation,is the aspect of live recording up to 24 tracks in real-time with NO latency for monitoring, and how many interfaces you have to run in sync to capture. I know from experience to do that many tracks at once you will have to bump up the latency and that could be a problem. I am a musician as well and have recorded in the hobby to professional arena since a teen. I have done my share of Pro Tools sessions, and I can tell you there is a difference in capturing a 3 minute 24 track performance and having to run these computers rock solid with no issues for hours at the time. BTW, I have never owned a Mac. And until PCs roll over and die I will continue to use them.                                                                                               I attended an event here in Macon,Ga., a very large gospel choir. They hired a truck in from Atlanta. Very large production truck, completely outfitted with Pro Tools as their media. The show was about 2 and 1/2 hours long. A storm brewed up and almost to the end of the show the power bumped, just for a second. The engineer had to inform the church board members that they lost the whole performance in a blink of an eye.
This is an engineer or producers nightmare! Ever since I have stuck to Adat for live, dump to computer for production. I know that computers have advanced from that point in time. So I take that into consideration.
While I would trust a laptop for one track overdubbing to build a track, I'm not quite sure about recommending a laptop for genuine 24 track recording in real time. I will always see that moment when I would have to walk over to the guitar player after the show and tell him that the best solo he ever played in his life crashed and burned. Scary!
I do look forward to the day when the horse power and stability issues are gone and we can all use our hand size recording studios all over the world with no issues.
Not trolling just asking questions.

Would anyone like to review the following laptop I can get at Walmart and recommend it or something else of equal value?  The price is $998.00.  I don't know what the speed of the SATA hard drive is. 
 
HP 17.3" Pavilion DV7-4287CL Laptop PC:
Key Features and Benefits:

• Intel Core i5-480M processor
  2.66GHz  
  
• 8GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory (expandable to 8GB)
   
  
• 750GB SATA hard drive
  Store 500,000 photos, 214,000 songs or 395 hours of HD video and more
   
  
• LightScribe Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD Burner with Double Layer support
  Watch HD movies, and read and write CDs and DVDs in multiple formats  
  
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
  Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with the 802.11b/g/n connection built into your PC  
  
• 17.3" HP BrightView LED display
  ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6550 Graphics with 1024MB DDR3 with up to 4083MB total graphics memory

Additional Features:

• 5-in-1 memory card reader
• 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x USB port + eSATA port, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x headphone-out, 1 x microphone-in, 1 x RJ-45 Ethernet port, 1 x VGA port
• 9-cell lithium-ion battery, up to 7 hours, 45 min battery life

Software:

• Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition (To learn more about the features of Windows 7, click here)
• Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - includes reduced functionality versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with advertising. Powerpoint or Outlook are NOT included. Purchase Office 2010 today and get the most out of your new PC. (To learn more about the features of Office 2010, click here)
• Symantec Norton Internet Security 2011 (60-day trial)
• CyberLink DVD Suite Premium, CyberLink DVD Suite Deluxe

Rimshot


Would anyone like to review the following laptop I can get at Walmart and recommend it or something else of equal value?  The price is $998.00.  I don't know what the speed of the SATA hard drive is. 
 
HP 17.3" Pavilion DV7-4287CL Laptop PC:
Key Features and Benefits:

• Intel Core i5-480M processor
  2.66GHz  
• 8GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory (expandable to 8GB)
   
• 750GB SATA hard drive
  Store 500,000 photos, 214,000 songs or 395 hours of HD video and more
   
• LightScribe Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD Burner with Double Layer support
  Watch HD movies, and read and write CDs and DVDs in multiple formats  
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
  Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with the 802.11b/g/n connection built into your PC  
• 17.3" HP BrightView LED display
  ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6550 Graphics with 1024MB DDR3 with up to 4083MB total graphics memory

Additional Features:

• 5-in-1 memory card reader
• 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x USB port + eSATA port, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x headphone-out, 1 x microphone-in, 1 x RJ-45 Ethernet port, 1 x VGA port
• 9-cell lithium-ion battery, up to 7 hours, 45 min battery life

Software:

• Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition (To learn more about the features of Windows 7, click here)
• Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - includes reduced functionality versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with advertising. Powerpoint or Outlook are NOT included. Purchase Office 2010 today and get the most out of your new PC. (To learn more about the features of Office 2010, click here)
• Symantec Norton Internet Security 2011 (60-day trial)
• CyberLink DVD Suite Premium, CyberLink DVD Suite Deluxe

Read this thread by Jim Roseberry:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1916973
 
 

my crappy gateway runs at around 100.  granted my desktop hovers at 15 to 20 but I run sonar for mobile recording on the laptop with 8 audio in's and no glitches and it is well below X1 specs.  

I picked up an HP Pavillion Laptop - DV6-3167CA last week for $670 Canadian (that's including our ridiculous 12% tax). I've got SONAR X1 and all my plugins from my desktop version loaded. I've brought over some projects from my studio computer to work on while I am on at trip.

I haven't yet purchased a audio interface for portable use, but I'll probably go with the Roland Octa-capture.

Sonar seems to work fine, however I have had to install ASIO4ALL to get the on board audio card to work without pops/glitches. I find it interesting that I can run Reason 4 natively (without using ASIO4ALL) and don't get pop/glitches on basic soft synth playback. Can anyone explain that?

Anyway, just thought it would be good to add that an off the shelf laptop does seem to be totally usable with Sonar X1.

Jon