Laptop Computer Bottleneck question.

[Guest]

I've heard that the major performance bottlenecks on laptops are the hard drives. I'm hoping to purchase a laptop for video editing and was thinking of going with a p4 1.4Ghz with 512 DDRAM, an external 19' monitor and external Firewire Hard Drive. My question is if I am eliminating the typical laptop computer bottlenecks by using an external firewire HD and CRT monitor? I would assume so since it would seem like RAM, CPU, Video Card (for video editing) and other features that one can easily opt for on a laptop nowadays shouldn't slowdown the system like they might have done a 'short' while ago.
Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks.
Nick M.

 

[psnathan]

I think there is a major difference between a desktop chipset and a mobile chipset. The best option i think is to used a desktop for video editing.

About the firewire, recently I read an article( forgot where I read it) that the new USB 2.0 hardisks have more bandwidth than firewire products. Unfortunately, there not many(none that I know of) USB 2.0 enabled notebooks(mainly because the notebook chipsets are a bit lagging behind the desktop ones.) and also the only USB 2.0 hardisk solution currently available is from Maxtor.

Another factor to consider is the video capture support on notebooks, I think the only way to do it effectively on a notebook is to use an external MPEG1/2 encoder(like the ones available from Hauppage).

Well these are just my thoughts.

 

[Harisahmed]

Don't get too overjoyed about the bandwidth for Firewire or USB 2. Make sure you look at any reviews for external drives, so far it looks like they are not as fast as internal drives.