Laptop spec help

MartinBush

Hi all

I have been looking at older second hand laptops to get me started on recording my own music. There's two that have been offered by a forum member, but  neither of us are well up enough to know how the specs below relate to how well they would run a DAW programme.

My plan is to initially use one of the free programmes until I get to know what I am doing.

Below are the specs - would either be able to run something like Cakewalk for instance? Sorry that I can't get the columns to line up properly, but it should be reasonably easy to see which is which.

HP Pavilion G72 laptop	HP G5 250 laptop
Screen	17" 1600 x 900	15" 1366/768
HD	223 Gb (250) Not SSD	464 Gb (500) Not SSD
RAM	8 Gb	4 GB
Processor	i3 - M350 2.27 GHz	i3-4005U 1.7 GHz
OS	Win 7 Pro	Win 10 Pro
Power Supply	Yes	Yes
32 or 64 Bit	64	64
HDMI	Yes	Yes
DVD Drive	DVD RW	DVD RW
USB ports	3	3
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes

Danny1969

Spec wise both are fine. These models don't have the best plastics for constant travel use but for home use where they aren't  constantly opened and closed they will be allright. 

Win 7 Pro can cause problems with some interface drivers ... as it needs drivers to be signed and certified before it will allow them to be installed. You can navigate around that on startup but it can be a pain. Likewise Win 10 pro . For audio use your better off with home versions.  

Both models can be reloaded with home versions so that's not a deal breaker

MartinBush

Cheers Danny 1969

How easy is it to load the home versions on a second hand computer? 

By interface drivers I am presuming you mean USB audio interfaces. My plan was to get one from ebay and my selection would be based largely on price - does that seem OK or are there ones to avoid?

Danny1969

On HP laptops it's escape and then F10 to enter the BIOS setup. Then you can change boot order to USB and load Win 7 home or Win 10 home from a bootable USB stick ... using the MS Media Creation tool which is a free and easy to use tool from Microsoft.  So very easy to do. Drivers not included in the OS are free to download from HP support. 

My tip for cheap USB interfaces is Mbox  .... because people think you need Protools LE to run them but they run fine under Reaper and other DAW's but also allow you to use Protools LE8 which is a great home DAW

MartinBush

Cheers. 

With a lot of this at the moment I am very much in the mindset of "if I plug this in here will the sound come out there and go into there?" - I'm not a technophobe, but I am used to using things that have been set up and all I have to do is operate them

This will be a learning experience for me on the tech as well as musical side.