Laptop for editing digital content

I'm in the market for a new laptop. The principal task I'll need it to carry out is to convert Hi8 camcorder tapes to digital & then burn to DVD. The laptop I currently use for this is not suitable - the conversion process takes too long.

I am asking for advice on ..

• what type of processor I should look to be included, e.g. how does one differentiate between a

• Also, I assume that the speed of the hard drive is relevant, for I/O and caching. Apart from the amount of storage, what attributes should the hard drive have for supporting video editing ?

TarfHead said:

Also, I assume that the speed of the hard drive is relevant, for I/O and caching. Apart from the amount of storage, what attributes should the hard drive have for supporting video editing ?

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Video editing is always slow.

A laptop is not ideal as it uses slow drives to save power.

Think desktop with two high-speed hard drives, one with the source file and the other with the destination file. Ideally the video editing drives should be separate physical drives from the the OS & software drive, this avoids contention and fragmentation. If you want to get extreme, use a RAID array. Speed costs.

If you must use a laptop, consider, as the second drive, using an external ESATA drive connected directly to the SATA bus or using an adaptor.

Use good software and make sure to have plenty of RAM.

Does it need to be a laptop?

Hard drive speeds are important.

You can get laptops with fast RAID drives.

Getting the fastest CPU will be the priority for video stuff, then ram then HD speeds.

Thanks Folks