capturing using a laptop
 

thinking o getting on to use for capturing, and monitoring a shoot

hard drive speed? 4200 ok
5400?

7200?

any thoughts

The higher the speed the better. You might need to think about storage space for video files as well. Maybe an external firewire drive (LaCie etc) would give you the speed and the capacity.
As long as you can get a mains feed to power it of course, although there are ways around that, with a voltage inverter from a car cigarette lighter socket.)
I keep one in my car to power a tv monitor.

Robin.

I am currently using Sager Laptop (3.2 GHz P4 / 1 GB RAM) with an 80 GB 5400 rpm harddrive and have had no problems using the onboard firewire interface. Of course, 80 GB doesn't go all that far in terms of storage of clips and I download it to my older, slower desktop with tons of storage. A nice feature of the Sager is that it has a 12V adapter option so you don't have to futz with an inverter if you're going portable for any length of time. Most newer, fast laptops (mine included) have a rather limited attention span on the internal battery.

I upgraded from a Dell 450 mHz P3 with a 60GB, 4800 rpm laptop. I used an OrangeMicro Firewire card to interface with the camera. This also worked well for capture, although it was pretty slow for anything else.

Moral of the story: I should think that most moderate to high end laptops / harddrives will do fine. Many newer ones are coming out with intergrated firewire connectors which is a plus.

Even though my laptop is quite a bit faster than my desk unit, I tend to use the latter for editiing due to the better monitors, keyboard and all around ergonomics. You could, of course, add these to any laptop (along with the outboard hard drive for storage) and have a nice setup.