Hi,
I'mm looking at purchasing a Dell laptop (Inspiron 9300) to do a lot of video editing on. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my editing software.

This is the configuration I am looking at:

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen XGA+ Display
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800
100GB Hard Drive (Ultra ATA)
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability
Microsoft® Plus! Digital Media Edition

What I need to know is if anyone is using a configuration like this for video editing and if it is satisfactory. I have concerns about the speed of the hard drive, as well as the Dell integrated audio (no options available for audio). Synchronization of sound is obviously essential.

I would really appreciate getting some opinions on whether or not this machine will be adequate. I would hate to spend all that money and find out it just can't do it.

Thanks!

Nora

Of course you can, but before you start buying anything, check if thath HD is fast enough to support DV data flow. It would be better If that HD is a 7200rpm one.

As far as I know, the actual Pentium desktop CPUs are better at video encoding than their mobiel counterparts, so you might be best going for a notebook with an actual pentium 4 in it rather than a pentium M.

There's also the Athlon 64 option, but that just complicates matters

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Ok, so if I also got an external drive of some kind, either an SATA or a regular external drive that runs at 7200 and has either a firewire or USB 2.0 connection, would that work?

Btw, thanks so much for all the input!

Hi Nora,

I use a laptop (Portege M200) to video edit all the time. I actually use two, one at work and I own one that I do my family videos on. The one at work uses a 5400 RPM hard drive and I can capture fine. I always defrag the drive before capture. Having said that, I would recommend that you get one with a 7200 RPM drive. My personal M200 has a 7200 RPM drive and it makes a world of difference in how fast the computer runs for everything (including video editing). I’ve never tried capturing to a 7200 RPM external drive. Even if it worked, your computer is still going to run slower with the 5400 RPM drive.

I know many people discourage video editing on a laptop, but I find the mobility is fantastic. Video editing will be a slower process on a laptop, but that’s the tradeoff. I need to be able to edit and produce DVD’s during kids camps and stuff and the laptop is the only way to go for me.

Good luck,

-James

Well, It's ok for most of situations to use a extrenal HD for it, but I can predict a problem...

If your notebook has only one Firewire port, it'll be plugged on to videocamera, and you'll have no HD connected.

For apply that, so, buy a Firewire hub and a HD firewire or, otherwise, buy a USB2.0 drive.

Or an external Firewire Drive with additional ports. My external Firewire drive has an additional port for my cam (or my wife's i-Pod).

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ULead products mostly including Mediastudio Pro (V8.0), Video Studio 8, Movie Factory 2.0, Premiere Elements

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