Hi Sam,
As I see it, there is one major thing you have to consider:
the HD. Most lappy drives run with the old speed 5400 c/m. In desktops the HD runs with 7200, some SCSI, SAS drives etc even with 10000-15000. 5400 may cause you drop outs or simply arent fast enough for plugins. I know there are almost no lappies available with the faster SATA II standard 7200 speed. So the first thing I would do is change the disk. There is a Seagate out for laptops with 7200 - just can`t recall the exact name. (Please look at the Seagate page and into the specs of the drives)

If you want to run XP (and I would suggest you so), go to the desired laptop homepage and see if drivers are available for XP.
Don`t buy supermarket products (Hofer, Medion is a Hofer brand BTW, Interspar etc), buy brand names. They have good homepages with the drivers available.

Other elements to watch out for are: Intel Dual Core CPU,
Ram should be at leat 2 GB (the application can use 1.5 GB in a 32bit environment anyway, but the rest is needed for Windows - and Windows can only use 3 GB when using 32bit OS)
The graphics cardis of no big importance. Most lappies are very expensive becuase of a dedicated graphics card. I would suggest a dedicated one, because a shared one takes the memory from the RAM which is desperatetly needed in music production. But don`t get the best one - would be a waste of money.

And last but not least: Optimize your OS for audio (disable all unneeded Windows services, virus scan etc)

Good luck, Sandra

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