Laptop vs. Desktop

[Chris Rackauckas]

Desktops will always be better power-wise just because they're more upgradable and are can more easily adjust cases to let heat flow better (greatly reducing heat sink costs). However, laptops have their ups. If you have the money, a mobile i7 laptop will give you all the power you need and dock it. It will have an HDMI out these days and also a vga. You can add to it with a dock like this: ViDock 2 ExpressCard External Video Card Solution - ViDock2, $292.95.

In fact for my laptop I have a dock where I just plug in the usb hub and the vga cable and then it basically turns into a desktop (I have a mouse and keyboard plugged into the hub).

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Bryan Sellars

From what I've read about these DIY plans from these video guys they use some form of raid array and expensive graphics cards which these days is overkill, most editing programs I tried gained nothing from graphics cards, the only exception I found was Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 (not a program I would recommend) really all you need is a fast processor and plenty of storage, I beleive in keeping it simple.

Adobe CS4 use the video card a reasonable amount and Avid Media Composer uses it extensively. Vegas uses it not at all.

[Lynne Whelden]

Thanks for all the useful insights!