The 8760 has a 4-pin FW connection which I believe just means no power. That's not an issue as the ZED is mains powered. It also works on my current laptop okay a Toshiba Satellite something-or-other also with 4-pin connection.

There are two main issues you'll deal with regarding a laptop.


The Firewire controller is almost surely not Texas Instruments (meaning it may not work well with a particular audio interface).  The Express-card controller is often using the same (crap) chipset as FW... so an Express-card TI chipset Firewire controller often doesn't solve the problem.
If you wish to work at ultra low latency settings (64-sample ASIO buffer size), this issue is more critical.

High idle DPC latency
The average off-the-shelf laptop is made for the average laptop user.
Folks surfing the internet, running MS Office, and sending Email are far more concerned with long battery life than achieving absolute maximum performance/thru-put.  Power management features often cause high DPC latency.
Depending on the unit, you may be able to get it under control... or you may have little to no means of addressing the issue.  Off-the-shelf units (laptops and towers) often don't expose certain BIOS settings that can be helpful for reducing DPC latency.  It's intentionally "dumming down" the product... so a novice user doesn't foul up the machine (causing heavier tech-support load).  High DPC latency will have little/no affect on the average laptop user.  For DAW purposes: If you wish to run substantial audio loads at small ASIO buffer sizes, low/consistent DPC latency is a must.

Thanks for the input Jim. I've bit the bullet and ordered the HP. I've read lots of good reviews of it (from users as well as 'reviewers') but very little on the Dell hence my decision.

Low latency isn't particularly important regarding the audio side as I'll be monitoring direct from my ZED-R16. For what little soft synth work I do I can do that in my studio as will the mixing stage. If it turns out I can do that on the HP that'll be a bonus but not essential.

I'm getting more and more live recording work. My battered old Toshiba Satellite works perfectly well for that purpose *if* for some reason the HP won't but of course it'd be easier if it does work.

Audio with firewire on laptops seems pretty much a dead end but I never envisaged recording live away from the studio when I bought the ZED which is great on my DAW. Not that it is important to me but it'll run an ASIO buffer of 64 samples with a reported roundtrip latency of 5.8 msecs. It'll run all day like that without problems/drop out etc. As I monitor through the board though it's pretty much irrelevant to me.

My main use for the laptop will be for screen captures for video work which is why I need the higher resolution. I can also do much of that in the studio but it'll be extremely convienent not to mention more efficient for me, if I can carry on with the video side of things while I'm away from the studio, and for video the HP gets rated quite well.

I'll post my findings on how it works when I get it set up. It may be helpful for someone else. I've found very little audio based information for it so any I add may be a bonus for others.

Thanks again to everyone for all the input and comments.

Just a quick update on this for anyone searching info pre-purchase.

The display is great and everything I hoped it would be. Great resolution (1920 x 1080) allowing me to prep and screen capture videos on it.

The only negative so far is the spacebar. It's possible to press it, hear the click, but it doesn't seem to register. i.e. no space. It seems to be if I catch the bottom part of the bar rather than in the centre. Perhaps it's just me but the rest of the keyboard is fine.

The other important part for me has worked out okay as well. Without doing much in the way of tweaking except for disabling core parking is that dpc latency is around the 150 - 200 usec mark. I'm sure I can probably get that down if need be but it hasn't caused any issues so far. Having said that the onboard FW is rubbish. Even setting a latency as high as 4096 on my ZED-R16 it still drops out instantly.

I've bought a FW express card with a TI chip and that is much much better. I can run anything at 128 samples and lighter projects at 64 samples. . I'm sure I could probably improve that situation with a few tweaks but that's good enough for me for now.

I may post more later as I use it more and start to put it through its paces but the initial impression is great and I'm glad I bought it.

Hope that helps someone in the future.

Thanks for the heads up Karl