buzz forums

Hello!

I've been offerred to buy a laptop from a friend and I wonder if anyone can let me know if the specs are good enough.

My intentions is to use it with Buzz, maybe Bitwig in the future (and to send streams to my tv)

It's a asus 15" r503c, it's 2 years old and the prize asked for is 160€, 120£, 200$

http://www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?e=1523444

back in my days we ran buzz on a 486 and thats how we liked it!
(not really, but yeah, this should definitely work hehe)
price seems about right..

i7 would be best, but i3 should work ok

It depends a lot on what you are doing with it. Do you run any VSTs? If you're running everything out of Buzz native machines than it should be more than enough.

Buzz itself has very minimal system requirements, and most of the native buzz machines have very low system requirements as well, although there are some exceptions. In my experiences before I started using VST instruments, what ate most of my cpu was reverb. I've seen some posters who take it as a point of pride that they won't use any plugins if they can't run on such and such archaic old system with such and such outdated processor. I think this is way cool, and I have a project in the back of my head to get buzz running on the oldest, funkiest computer I can manage. So yes your computer will be good enough. I recommend that you don't start using VST machines until later. Setting up VST isn't hard but it is a bit of a hassle, and there's a wealth of totally awesome native buzz machines for to keep you busy for a long time. Part of what defines buzz is all the great work done by the community of buzz programmers. It's a modular software environment where anyone can contribute, and a few standout people did some really amazing work with it. If you want to sound really good I recommend you get an external sound card, assuming that laptop has support for one of the later usb protocals. Usb 2 or 3 should be fine, but getting a sound card isn't necessary if you can't afford it at this time. When I started my favorite machines were Rout 808 for drums and the Uranus reverb by Joachim and the Fuzzpilz Orange Kid synth.

Aaaiiight!
Thanks for your reflections. I think I'll go with it.
I've never used vst yet but I guess I'll try one day though.
Still, as you say there's a lot of native machines around and since I'm still in a learning phase they are definitely good enough.