as i was on the train today and saw a few people with their laptops, i just though, how cool it would be to make tunes on renoise while on train, just the thought of a stranger sitting down next to you and looking over your shoulder, interested and stuff. would a laptop be able to handle the CPU intensity of renoise and/or VSTI’s ??
anyway, anyone ever used renoise whilst on a train basically, maybe the speed and the view, sights out the window gives you inspiration too huh?
not on a train, but yes on a plane and in automobiles. 
Did one track yesterday on a car. I actually was planning to go to the destination with a train, but friend took me there with a car, so I had to make tunes in a car. 
It’s more comfortable to do in studio though. I was running laptop with 800MHz powersave mode and everything run great, no lagging. Renoise is pretty fast.
Laptops are really fast nowadays mate - even the pretty cheap ones.
I might also add, that I haven’t used non-laptop computer for several years. Desktop computers take a lot of space and are not portable. I like doing my stuff in bed, at work, on balcony, outside in the forest, at friends place, on bus, etc.
not on a train either but yeah in a plane, and during transit. it helps to kill loads of time and sometimes when youre just messing about, you come up with some really nice patterns!
always raises eyebrows 
just got me an n95 as well so i’m gonna see what the symbian audio programs are like
I have only just started using Renoise but I run it on a laptop fine. I have a Sony Vaio running Vista, with a Core 2 Duo 2ghz processor and 2gb of RAM. It runs as well as any other music software I’ve used on the laptop (Sonar, FL Studio, Live) and handles VST instruments/effects brilliantly.
What I am totally loving about Renoise (and trackers generally) is that because it is designed to be driven from the computer keyboard, you really don’t need any other gear to do some serious work. My laptop’s built in soundcard is acceptable for working in bed or on the move (I wouldn’t do my final mix on it!), and because of the way trackers work you don’t need to carry a MIDI keyboard around.
So, to sum up, I’d say Renoise is almost designed for the laptop musician!
oh and i’m running an oldish single processor thinkpad and everything works fine.
as dr skunk says, todays cheaper laptops shouldnt have any problems what so ever.
If you get car-, train- and plane-sick you’ld rather not use a laptop to puke over it while composing … but if you don’t suffer from that there is no argument to hold you back otherwise.
I always use my laptop and sometimes Renoise when going on a train or bus or whatever. Any laptop with a decent CPU can handle most of your DSP’s and VSTi’s. The hardest thing about working on a train is background noise, and lack of space. Using the Mouse pad on your laptop is quite annoying, and there’s usually not many flat surfaces to use a real mouse.
Besides from background noice and lack of space there’s no problem working on trains, in cars, in the bus, on the plane or whatever. Maybe not the optmal atmossphere for mastering and mixing, but good enough for fiddling oround, passing the time, or coming up with some new melodies.
Still have to decide between 13.3" and 15.2"; what are your experiences?
the bigger the screen, the better. especially with renoise. the gui is pretty detailed.
And btw, 3 hours of travel, a laptop with drumatic3 and some bass-synth : loads of fun.
I have 15" screen. Exactly enough to run Renoise. The details on screen are pretty small, and you don’t want to go with 10" screens unless you have great vision. I don’t.
About DSP cards. They are waste of money. Don’t buy those.
I’m using 15,4". A good reason to choose bigger is if the laptop has numreric pad as well. Quite useful. Other than that I’d defenatly go for smaller. My next laptop buy will be a light as possible with as much processing power as possible. A good GPU doesn’t matter so much if you’re not playing games on it. A light and small formfactor is always nice if you’re travelling a lot.
a lot audio interfaces (if you mean those with dsp cards),
can be connected with firewire or USB.
take a look around on the internet. it maybe help you with your choice
Just be sure to pick one without external powersupply and with a proper headphone jack. Better go to a shop for this, online-stores mostly don’t tell you if a card needs external power (or if it is just an option for powering +48V Mics).
My first card was a creative that was dependant on external powersupply (no word about that on the shop’s website) which ofcourse meant it was not portable at all.
Optional external powering is always a good thing. Cause when you wire up a bunch of external devices on your computer (like I often do), you definitely don’t want them to be powered by bus. Depending on devices you are using, your whole laptop may only be able to power one heavy device. If plugging in more of those, they will all shut down.
I used to use my laptop with Renoise on the bus all the time till my battery started crapping out (only lasts a minute nowadays… literally) … but my laptop is ALL I’ve ever used to run Renoise, so yep, they’re more than adequate. Mine’s a 5 year old Toshiba A10 2.0ghz piece of shit with 700some mb of ram and a crappy-as-hell soundcard.
Only thing that can become an issue is that CPU intense processes often drain battery faster… I’d suggest getting a lithium battery if possible 
I also make all my music on a laptop.
The same one I use Ableton on for gigs.
They’re multifunctional! So I guess so.
macbook pro is brilliant for rns.
if ya want to add dsp cards…well TC ELECTRONIC have a solution for this via firewire.
(btw, macbook pro have a TI fw chip onboard, most recommended chip for stable firewire audio or dsp functioning)