What laptop to buy for recording.

Try to get one with 2 internal drives, or 1 internal drive and an eSATA port, either an i5 or i7 CPU (or beefy AMD but Intel is a bit faster, in my opinion), and if your primary drive can be SSD then so much the better.  Shoot for at least 8 GB of memory, and 16 or 32 if available and within budget.
 
Having 2 drives is a good thing for balancing access demands - primary drive for OS and applications, 2nd drive for data, projects, audio, and sample libraries.
 
Primary drive of SSD type will give you good performance for Windows - this is not critical, it it means you cannot then afford a second drive or enough memory.
 
Secondary drive either internal or eSATA would be ideal, with USB 3 being viable though not best.
 
Memory COULD run in 4 GB, but really - consider 8/16/32, with 32 being a luxury - 16 is fabulous, and 8 is still good.  
 
When you DO select a laptop, please note that you will want to temporarily disable or if there is a hardware switch turn off your Wi-Fi adapter just prior to launching Sonar, and then you can enable it again after finishing your Sonar session.  This is because Wi-Fi adapters can cause MASSIVE latency spikes, which will wreak havoc at attempts to do audio streaming with Sonar.
 
There are lots to choose from - I would suggest you consider getting screen protection and possibly accidental damage protection, as well.  I used to have a Dell laptop that I gigged with, and over a 3-year period just about all the components were fixed/replaced.
 
There may well be other schools of thought on this subject, too, from other forum folk.
 
Bob Bone
 

HP seem to do great laptops nowadays (I have been tempted recently but so far have resisted). If you are into firewire interfaces the models with in built thunderbolt interfaces should be an extremely attractive proposition.
 
I notice Cake are using them as well (BTW there are cheaper models):
http://blog.cakewalk.com/sonar-x3-our-demo-machines/
 

Just for recording, I like the idea of a little Windows Slate PC. They are dead silent. I wouldn't want to mix on one though. It would just be for capturing live performances. Also, I don't actually have one.

What Robert said I think is spot on.

Two internal drives - you won't regret it. You can get an external DVD drive that you hook up with USB when you need it. For audio engineering having two hard drives should take precedence over an internal DVD drive.

Also what Robert said - turn off WIFI when using Sonar on a laptop. It helps a lot to prevent unexpected latency caused by the WIFI stuff.

wruess
..There is something to be said for having a system that is optimized for the task...

Cactus Music
...Processor speed and RAM mean very little to recording audio...

 
I agree. It therefore doesn't need to be a new laptop. An old one can be optimised. My solution would be to purchase a suitable second-hand Dell laptop, wipe it clean and install Windows 7 from scratch. The hardware drivers are always available from Dell's website. I would leave some of the hardware disabled (e.g. Wi-fi, webcam, audio, etc.) and omit installing the associated drivers. Then I would install Sonar plus software needed for recording, but nothing else. I believe that the resulting system would be far better suited for purpose than any off-the-shelf purchase.
 
Not everybody would be comfortable with doing this though.

I'm also shopping for a laptop to run X3 and was wondering the same thing.
I'm considering this machine:
 
 HP ENVY TouchSmart 17-j185nr Notebook PC (ENERGY STAR)

 
Anyone have any thoughts on this computer?
Thanks.

Until it is tested with  DPCLAT  you won't have a true answer. 
90% ( ? wild guess ) of all the  modern computers can run Sonar. But some combinations of hardware do not play well together so it will always be a crap shoot until each system is tested. 
 

I have a HP Envy with touch screen, as long as you don't mind portable USB drives for audio it really is a dream.
 
Ben

Just throw it on any ol' thing to get going!
 
Computer recording is great and kinda stable these days, but I still don't think I'd trust it for live recording, one wrong click and everything is gone!
 
Eight mics won't go far if you're recording a whole band. Go for 16 mics.
 
Maybe you can stack two of these things for 16 tracks under $1000.00 dollars. Pretty cool.  I know it seems a little expensive, but I spent about $1000.00 on two eq's in my younger days! Try to find some used ones.
 
TASCAM DR-680 Solid State 8 Track Location Recorder   
http://www.musiciansfrien...rack-location-recorder


Then import it into Sonar to clean it up, add effects, etc. I think you can even master in Sonar these days.