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As portability and mobile technology become assumed requirements of daily living,
it’s no surprise that it is the “Era of The
Laptop” for computer-based recording. With DVD-R drives finally affordably slapped into PowerBooks, I
decided it was prime time to get myself a new PowerBook as the new core CPU for my studio.
So, you might be wondering, “What about PCI slots? How will you use your old cards? How will you make it all work? Don’t I need a tower to run my studio efficiently?”
Well, there are several answers to these completely rational questions. First of
all, you don’t have to worry about connectability issues if you realize that
the FireWire ports built into PowerBooks give you instant networking capability
to other components.
 
Connect Your PowerBook to External Drives and Interfaces
I use the FireWire ports on my PowerBook to connect to a
couple rackmount FireWire external hard drives,
to my Apogee Trak
2 audio interface, and to all of my other studio machines. With FireWire, you
don’t even need a network hub. You can just daisy-chain them together and
every item connected will have access to the others along the daisy
chain.
Get a Magma Expansion Chassis for Your PCI Cards
For all my PCI cards, like my UAD-1 DSP card, I use a Magma
expansion chassis, which easily connects through the PC card slot on the side of
the PowerBook.
The G4
PowerBooks are great machines for doing audio work and can handle most of the high
or low-end apps currently out for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.
Using the PowerBook with a Cinema Display
Next, you might wonder about using the PowerBook with an outside monitor. Well,
this is super easy. You just need a cheap little adapter
to connect to any of the displays.
I personally hook my PowerBook up to one of those sweet 23” cinema displays
while I’m in the studio, using the PowerBook monitor for my virtual mixer,
and the cinema display for my arrange window. Then when I go on the road, I just unhook
my PowerBook from the biggie and use the PowerBook screen by itself. Honestly, it’s
really a simple set up with no complications.
Top that with the built-in SuperDrive (DVD and CD readable/writeable), or a
ComboDrive model (DVD readable and CD readable/writeable) and you can see that this
is the perfect machine for audioheads who are constantly on the go, on tour, or
travelling about between different studios.
There’s No Excuse to Not Go Portable
I highly recommend going portable. There’s really no excuse to have to have
a tower anymore, except if you want a dual processor model, or if you are looking to slip into
a G5 processor, which is not currently available in the PowerBook models yet. The
G4 PowerBooks are great machines for doing audio work and can handle any of the
high or low-end apps currently out for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.
So, if you’re ready to get a PowerBook, go ahead and select from the options
to the right. When you purchase through Audiohead links, it helps support the
site costs and maintenance, and you get the best available price on products
through our affiliate program with Amazon.
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Apple 17” 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook with SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW)
(click the image below to purchase)
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Apple 15” 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook with SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW)
(click the image below to purchase)
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Apple 15” 1.0GHz G4 PowerBook with Combo Drive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
(click the image below to purchase)
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Apple 12” 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook with Combo Drive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
(click the image below to purchase)
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Apple 12” 1.0GHz G4 PowerBook with SuperDrive (DVD-WR/CD-RW)
(click the image below to purchase)
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AppleCare Extended Coverage Plan for PowerBook
(click the image below to purchase)
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For more Mac stuff, click here.
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