Buying Mac Portable To Record/burn Cds, Help finding cheepest/fastest solution Options

[derhamm]

I need a laptop to record band rehearsals with my stereo mic and burn rehearsal cds for band members afterwords quickly. I noticed 24x burners on ebay for $150 that fit in Lombard or Pismo Powerbook G3s so it seems like I could buy them all for around $500. Does anyone know if this is my best solution and/or if any other lowend/earlier mac portables (ie. Wallstreet) can support internal cd burners?

This post has been edited by derhamm: Wed 24 Sep 2003, 16:08

[boze]

ack! ebay has these old G3 pbooks going for like $550 to $750!

the truth is, any laptop with usb is capable of doing this. both a soundcard and external burner can be hooked up as external usb devices. you can look for something with a built in burner, but you mentioned wanting something that burns 'quickly' and you can get much faster firewire burners for $100 if you keep an eye out.

i think your best bet as far as mac laptops go (they'll be more expensive, slower and have fewer features than pc laptops at any pricepoint but still affordable in the range you're talking about) is to get a refurb ibook like the one at this page's Special Deals section http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebO...cts/AppleStore/

that way you can benefit from firewire (letting you hook up a fast burner for cheap) and have a machine that's fast enough to run osx for around $750. also they'll have way more hd space than an old G3 pbook which can have as little as 6gig (that ibook has 20g). you'd also be able to put an airport card in it down the road and have a small durable modern wireless laptop to tote around for web stuff.

this is just my opinion, but i think you'll get better results with an affordable usb soundcard than you would by buying an older G3 pbook just to have something that came with a mic input. you could try to find some sort of pizmo/lombard/wallstreet but i'm not sure they're as affordable as they should be considering how old and slow they are.

just to be clear: the ebay route requires the purchase of a usb or fw soundcard because these machines don't have a mic input. but unless you're budget is really tight and you don't really want a laptop for anything but this one recording task i think a 700mhz or better ibook is the better value. keep an eye on this site if you don't know it already http://www.dealmac.com

[derhamm]

Wow, thanks for all the info! I thought Lombard and Pismo (Bronze) machines have audio in jacks? The following links mention it anyway:

(Lombard) http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58341
(Pismo) http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58593

Regarding USB, how fast can USB1 devices transfer data? I ask because I want to burn cds at least 24x. My Toast software says I need at least 4MB per sec data transfer and I think to remember that USB1, found on older powerbooks, isn't that fast. That's why I was leaning towards an internal cd-burner, not to mention the simplicity of having an all in one audio recording/cd burning machine.

I also thought about getting a used ibook but again I wasn't sure about data transfer speed of it's usb and firewire ports. Only the new portable macs come with combo drives that are 24x cdr burners.

[boze]

hi derhamm-

yeah, i'm sorry if my post was a bit confusing. let me try again:

yes, the older G3 pbooks have audio in jacks. but they aren't cheap enough and have small hd's and no firewire or airport.

ibooks aren't perfect either because the cheap ones don't even have burners, just cd-rom drives (which i think is wildly out of pace with the pc world and kind of embarrassing).

but since you're shopping for the pismo, you are one of the only person to whom someone can say the following:
"but the ibooks are faster, bigger and almost as affordable"

in most normal situations i think the ibooks are laughably underpowered and overpriced, but while the combo drive ibooks are usually a bit too expensive these barebones 700mhz ibooks like the refurb or the ones listed each week at dealmac.com are at least good enough to run osx, have an okay-sized hd, and have firewire built in. so you'd need to get a usb soundcard (you can do up to four tracks of audio with a decent usb1.1 card, so a stereo mix of a rehearsal won't be a problem) and you'd need to get a fast 52x fw burner (can be had for $100) and you'd be ready.

alternately, you can see how fast a pismo you can find and maybe look into putting a firewire expansion card in the nubus (pcmcia) slot for the burner. you certainly won't find a G3 pbook with a burner any where near that speed since they didn't exist then.

if your budget allows then you could consider the refurb 12" pbooks they had at the apple store's deals section. they were only $1199 and i thought that was the best value for price that i'd seen in a mac laptop in years.

[derhamm]

Have you heard of the iMic? It's a USB analog audio input device for around $35. I've heard it works really well with ibooks.

I guess my main goal, which I should have stated earlier, is to spend less than $500 on a 2 track audio recording/24x cd-r burning machine.

My alternative is an Avery mp3 recorder for $250 - $350 that also records wav files. That is, until the iPods have a recording feature. But even so I'd still have to take it home and transfer audio to my desktop G3 before burning cds.

I might find a Powerbook G3 333 Lombard on ebay for around $350 and put the $150 CD-RW/DVD drive in it. I'm thinking, even if it's got a small hard drive I can ethernet between my desktop g3 with it's 160GB Hard drive space to back up my audio files. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has found another solution for the same or less $$

This post has been edited by derhamm: Wed 24 Sep 2003, 18:40

[derhamm]

Have you heard of the iMic? It's a USB analog audio input device for around $35. I've heard it works really well with ibooks.

I guess my main goal, which I should have stated earlier, is to spend less than $500 on a 2 track audio recording/24x cd-r burning machine.

My alternative is an Avery mp3 recorder for $250 - $350 that also records wav files. That is, until the iPods have a recording feature. But even so I'd still have to take it home and transfer audio to my desktop G3 before burning cds.

I might find a Powerbook G3 333 Lombard on ebay for around $350 and put the $150 CD-RW/DVD drive in it. I'm thinking, even if it's got a small hard drive I can eithernet between my desktop g3 with it's 160GB Hard drive space to back up my audio files. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has found another solution for the same or less $$

[boze]

yeah, that would work fine for that budget and it would sure give you more options than a mp3 recorder.

plus you could try the audio in and get a usb card if you wanted to after that. or even look into nubus cards down the road.

i think the imic is pretty chumpy but that's just my impression- never owned one.

good luck!

[urbanmatador]

i think the imic is pretty chumpy but that's just my impression- never owned one.

i bought an imic with my rev.2 tibook, and i found it just tolerable for personal use. not up to the task of a pro setup (ditched it for an 828 as soon as i had the cash), but as far as derhamm's needs i think it would be fine.

i agree that the g3 powerbook with expansion bay burner is probably the cheapest way to go. i've got a wall street right here, in fact, that i'd let go of cheaply...

the trick is to get an old-ish piece of software to do your recording, to keep in pace with your older machine. soundedit 16 will record like a champ on an older machine, for example, where coaster or peak is too new. make sense?

cheers
sam

[rickenbacker]

Derhamm, I don't think you'll be happy with an iMic for more than five minutes. It's more trouble than it's worth - spend a little more and at least get a decent USB interface. Edirol do a good range, as do M-Audio and a few other companies. I had an iMic for a month or so and was happy to get rid of it.

[derhamm]

Wanted to let you all know I finally found a Powerbook G3 400 (Bronze) in great condition for $400. I'm adding a Sony CRX820E-10 I bought from pcboost.com for $94 that adds internal 24x cd-r burning. (The LITEON LSC-24081 Black bezel Combo drive would work as well - for Lombard or Pismo model)

Now that I have a powerbook I'm excited about the prospects of also using it to run Native Instruments' B4 organ instrument. I'm considering purchasing Edirol's or M-Audio's 49 key usb controller keyboard and using the laptop as a tone generator on the gig. I wonder if it will support recording the gig at the sime time since I've heard NI's B4 only takes around 5% of the mac's system resources. And now that I have a Powerbook I can just use the mic-in port with my Audio Technica stereo mic along with Bias Peak.

Anyway, thanks again for all your help and advice.