What is the best laptop to run Arkaos vj DMX?

[Manuel1975]

Im new to the world of Arkaos vj DMX but im a motiongraphics designer at a advertising agency and in the weekends I work as a light jockey (dont ask, the past 7 years ive had a constant jetlag) Now I want to combine my two skills and do lighting in combination with vjing (full pal projecting and pixelmaped video) Arkaos is perfect for this. I like the Avolites lighting control desk familie and this combines very good.

 

Now for my question:

Last weekend I did a test with a Pearl expert hooked up to my laptop. I bought the enttec DMX pro usb for this test. I had it working for about an hour and was very impressed with the intuitive control. After the hour my laptop suddenly kept crashing and the whole proces became very frustrating... ;)

 

Witch laptop do I have to buy to run Arkaos without any problems in a enviroment with heavy vibrations, temperature changes, etc... Apple versus PC etc... Vista versus XP... Do I need a rugged laptop like the panasonic tough book? etc...

 

I would like to have some feedback on this. As im in love with the idea of combining my two passions... :unsure:

 

My current laptop has the following config:

 

HP Pavillion tx 1000 Touchscreen notebook pc

AMD Turion 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-50 1.6gh

2gb Ram

NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150, 128MB shared memory

32 bit operating system

Windows Vista Home Premium

[AstonChief]

I've never had a problem running the DMX version on any of the laptops here.

 

These mostly are a Dell Inspiron 9400 (XP) and a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi1554 (Vista Home Prem). The Fujitsu is the only machine ever to have been controlled from a lighting desk and there have never been any problems as such. This includes running in some very hot, "shakey" and confined club environments.

 

The system you list should run ArKaos adaquately. It may be worth taking some time to disable anything in Vista that isn't needed as it is rather memory hungry. Especially with the shared graphics memory eating into what you do have it could make a difference. Arkaos does seem to run more smoothly under XP than Vista, but this is again probably due to Vista's thirst for RAM.

 

You say you had it working fine for a period of time before the crashing began? It sounds like background processes hogging resources. Gradually things get loaded into the ram but never unloaded for whatever reason. The worst I've had during a show is a scheduled virus-scan starting itself up, thus reducing everything to an embarassing crawl.It was promptly killed!

 

I hope some of this has been of use to you.

[smalljoshua]

I did this recently for a show where the PC had Vista and was lagging and crashing in rehearsals.

 

I created a new user account and set the startup params to not start up any programs apart from Powerpoint.

 

Also Ctrl+Alt+Del and end any processes started by the user once the PC has booted fully and keep it disconnected from a network and the Wireless off.

 

Josh

[weatherhead]

really don't want to start a flame war or anything, but they really should be releasing this kind of software for linux...

[henny]

if you are going out to buy a laptop for arkaos look for ones with better onbord graphics, Ati ect , look what chipsets arkos can use for hardwhere rendering whitch will help speed the program up. also lots of ram 2gig is plenty.

 

on a side note

the best way to see what starts when your pc does and so be able to ditch them is to use the "run" command "msconfig".

 

don't dissable anything in msconfig it will tell you that you have everytime you boot. you will see from the list in ms config that there are 3 locations that run programs when the pc starts

 

1)start>programs>startup

 

2+3) regestery items under :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

&

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

 

theses can be cleared out by going to "run" (win+R) and running "regedit" and finding the folders above, note you can mess up you pc beond repair messing in the regestery so be warned!

 

cheers

[soundiesam]

I dunno whether arkos works with a mac but I would suggest a mac for anything graphical

[peternewman]

on a side note

the best way to see what starts when your pc does and so be able to ditch them is to use the "run" command "msconfig".

 

don't dissable anything in msconfig it will tell you that you have everytime you boot.

Without going too far OT and computer based, the second part of your statement isn't true. The first time after you reboot it will give you a message about the fact you've made changes, if you then choose one of the options, I think its "don't start MSConfig next time" or something similar, then the software you disabled won't run, but you won't be bugged by MSConfig either, which is a fair bit safer than editing the registry directly using regedit.

 

I dunno whether arkos works with a mac but I would suggest a mac for anything graphical

It does indeed Sam, and I'd agree with your comment that Macs are good for graphics work and indeed Arkaos.

 

One a more general note, why are you choosing to use a laptop, you will get better performance at a lower price with a PC although admittedly it won't be quite as portable, but you could get a shuttle PC or similar and a monitor to carry with it would be reasonably portable.

[twiggy]

Heya I would usually agree with the using a mac option as a fanboy but after a quicktime update quite recently the flash texts and some of the effects don't work properly, there has been an update but I'm still having a few problems. I would really recommend getting a desktop rather than a laptop as you get more power for your money and its easy to add video capture cards or other upgrades.

[live]

I would heartily recommend the Acer Aspire series (1640 upwards) I myself use 2 for Arkaos DMX,Resolume and V3D. They have good graphics card as standard(Intel 128mb) plus a dedicated Acer application that allows you adjust VGA o/puts, none have crashed on lengthy show's or given any problem's at all the only downside is the off mains capability which is terrible! You can get a really good deal on last years models (xp loaded) if you shop around but who want's Vista anyway

hope it helps

g

[paulears]

Forgive me - but this topic is rapidly turning into a computer forum style topic, presenting everyones own personal opinions on what laptop is best - but with no useful info at all (in my own personal opinion)

 

We have the link to Arkaos, making it kind of linked to what we do here - BUT if we were talking about moving lights, or sound mixers, people would be steaming in and asking what people are basing their recommendations on.

 

So if this topic is to help the OP - we should be talking about specs, not really makes - and also which OS works, or doesn't.

 

So for Arkaos, surely the vital features should be (in no particular order)

Processor type and speed

memory

interfaces

graphics specs

xp/vista

 

Apart from hardware failures - reliability is normally down to what other stuff is on the machine - isn't it?

 

Arkaos runs fine on this Dell Inspiron 1501 - but what good is that?

 

We don't usually do computer stuff, as we don't do DJ stuff - this topic makes me think the reason for this is pretty sound.

 

No doubt plenty will disagree with me - but there is nothing here that fills me with any confidence to buy a new laptop based on Blue Room advice.

[Nick S]

xp/vista

 

From a technical point of view there's a potential advantage to using Macs for VJ stuff, in that the underlying architecture of the OS allows far more flexibility in terms of what you can do with video on the fly using Core Image and Core Video. Not to say it should be a mac all the way, merely that there are potential advantages.

[Manuel1975]

Forgive me - but this topic is rapidly turning into a computer forum style topic, presenting everyones own personal opinions on what laptop is best - but with no useful info at all (in my own personal opinion)

 

We have the link to Arkaos, making it kind of linked to what we do here - BUT if we were talking about moving lights, or sound mixers, people would be steaming in and asking what people are basing their recommendations on.

 

So if this topic is to help the OP - we should be talking about specs, not really makes - and also which OS works, or doesn't.

 

So for Arkaos, surely the vital features should be (in no particular order)

Processor type and speed

memory

interfaces

graphics specs

xp/vista

 

Apart from hardware failures - reliability is normally down to what other stuff is on the machine - isn't it?

 

Arkaos runs fine on this Dell Inspiron 1501 - but what good is that?

 

We don't usually do computer stuff, as we don't do DJ stuff - this topic makes me think the reason for this is pretty sound.

 

No doubt plenty will disagree with me - but there is nothing here that fills me with any confidence to buy a new laptop based on Blue Room advice.

 

Hi Paul,

 

Im a little bit disappointed in your comment. You say that there is nothing here that would fill you with confidence to buy a new laptop. As you seem so confident in your in opinions, could you please tel me where to go with my question, appart from the Arkaos forum where I off course placed the same question!?

 

By your comment you inhibit any casual chit chat about the subject... Only realy confident people will post after this and thats a shame as all little bits of info could help...