Seeking Advice on Titanium mac, Recording music, vocals Options

[lord]

Looking for a Suitable LAPTOP

I am a recording artist looking for a memory and storage intensive portable recording unit i.e. a laptop that can do the following :

·Able to record DJ and MC mixes onto the computer’s hardrive from a line connecting to my amplifier. Would that be Analogue to Digital ? Would I need analogue to digital software or a converter ?
·Able to record digital radio. I think I can do this if it takes a digital television and radio card. I know you can get one for PC but are they done for Mac notebooks.
·Able to record sky digital and terrestial television. I don’t want to spend money on a DVD player and a VHS hard disc recorder so I want it to be able to record sky digital programs onto the hard drive and for the DVD to be able to link up to the television for viewing.. Would this be possible ?
·Do I need to find the appropriate programs/software then decide which type of laptop to buy ?
·If so where can I get such information?
·Can anyone advise me on the suitability of the Titanium G4’s ability to fulfill the above criteria?
Thank you

[damann]

it sounds like this is ultimately a software solution.
final cut pro or premiere should be the answers to your questions.
recording the dj mixes into the computer only really require software like cubase,logic, performer, protools or one of the cheaper, less functional equivalents.
the computer will effectively convert analogue to digital, obviously an interface will do the job better, a motu 828 for instance.
as far as capturing tv/video etc there are some usb/firewire devices that can handle this and are pretty cheap.
buy some mac magazines, they all advertise the products you're looking for.
in short, yes, it can all be done on the g4 laptop.
hope to have helped...

[lord]

Thanks for replying to quickly and thoroughly damann.

However I must point out that I am still in the learning stages and I wasn't clear when you mentioned final cut pro or premiere what are they used for ?

I'm considering a Mac over a pc laptop as I understand from my initial research that the mac has more memory and is more user friendly. Would you agree?
I'm used to using a PC but I am getting fed up with it's configuration problems!

I had my last PC built to spec Could you recommend a particular configutation of Mac? Or point me in the direction of a company that could build my to spec ?

For my purposes which are strictly recording, not making music, which program would you recommend: cubase, logic, performer, protools?

Thanks again

[damann]

it's handy that we're both based in london.
on this basis i'd recommend you go to tsc, the audio/visual solutions side of computer warehouse.
tell them what you want to do (this can be done over the phone), they'll work out exactly what you need, give you a list and prices.
then, quite frankly, armed with this information, buy a copy of one of the mac magazines and ring around for the best possible price!
mac's in mac users opinions are easier to use than pc's, but don't have that microsoft 'wizardy' thing going. macusers tend to want to get under the hood more than the average pc user!
macs don't really need configuring hardware wise like pc's, everything is basically, already onboard.
memory is something you can never have too much of, it's cheap to buy, and i'd always put more in than the machine ships with.
final cut and premiere are software applications that are used for video and audio editing, record your video/ tv or whatever into them and do what you want with it!
logic users tend to love logic, cubase users cubase etc, check them out for yourself at turnkey, digital village or the like, but cubase is the most widely used.
good luck...