[tow the tardis]

I'm hoping to get some fair and honest advice from other mac users. I'm currently using a G4 1.25 single processor tower. It has 64mb of video memory and 1.5gb of ram. I mainly do heavy multi-track recording with my Pro Toold MBox and heavy graphic design work. The tower is blazing fast and I have no complaints. What i really need though is portability and a quieter machine for recording vocals and acoustic guitars and i was thinking of selling my tower and getting a 12" powerbook and hooking it up to a Dell 2005fpw 20" display. Can anyone offer any insight as to what I should expect as far as performance goes? Any pros or cons would be appreciated. Your responses will help me decide if I should sell my tower and make the portable plunge. Thank for reading.

[Dewaine]

The current 12" will give you equal vram and a .25 bump in processor power. The only real down from what you have now is the memory on a 12" can only go to 1.25 gig.

Bottom line, if you are willing to have basicly the same power you have now then the 12" PB will work. But if you are wanting a true "upgrade" then get a 15, or 17 powerbook with more ram ability and vram (possibl 128 meg) and faster processor.

I run Cubase SL 1.6 on my 12" combo (stock except for 1.25gig ram). I have no problems at all, but I bounce vst midi to audio to take the major load off the processor. If I run Virsin Tera 2 (serious VSTi Synth) it really eats the processor, but by bouncing to audio (some call it freezing a track) I can do whatever I want.

[Fusion]

Don't forget that the hard drive is significantly slower as well which is of huge importance in recording.