[Cap]

Art: "Whadya say there, sonny? Speak up, ya young whippersnapper! :lovesic

Art, as in anything, your personal decision and choices ultimately determine which way to turn. You are doing well by investigating what choices there may be before arbitrarily jumping in and finding yourself in an inescapable corner, an expensive one to boot.

At the risk of personal attack, this is the road I've chosen based on audio mp3 & karaoke only. I do not offer or use video. Video raises minimum requirements dramatically and DJMC could assist you if that's your direction.

First, all high horsepower programs are on the home/office desktop. Only the absolutely needed softwares are on the lap top. My decision was to treat the lap top as a dual CD player.

No games, no internet, no anti-virus, no photo editing, no nothing. Operating system, mp3 software, Office 2000, and that's edit! K.I.S.S.

Under this concept or approach, a whole lot of horsepower is not needed. For me, eBay has been "my friend". Carefully and cautiously, 4 lap tops were purchased with more buzzers & whistles than what is realistically needed yet at the same price as 1 new unit.

So what do I have? Purchased used on eBay:
(3) SONY VAIO PCG-GRX-560 laptop computers (sold one back on eBay and made a few bucks). Pent-4M processor, 1.6ghz @ 400mhz front bus. 512mb RAM. 16.1" TFT screen (that's sizable for a lap top). 80gb 5400rpm internal hard drive. WinXP-Pro SR1a, 3 USB-1 ports, 1 Firewire port, and use the GigaPort-AG USB external sound card. The entire music library is internal. Any external devices is for duplicity of the entire music library.

Why 3? A backup to the backup of the main.

Now, for all the other remote stuff you mentioned...presentation, watching videos, surfing the internet in a hotel room, playing video games, routine office work off-site, I have a separate unit. SONY VAIO PCG-XG18. Just an ordinary work-related lap top, but it doesn't do DJ work, just like the other 3 don't do office work.

The office computer that I built last spring provides all the ponies I need in the office, but it doesn't do DJ work, just like the other 3 don't do office work.

If you'd like to chat instead of type, please feel free to call me. It's still a long winter! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif[/img]


[Sub-Note : SirWolfy and I posted at the same time so his is another look that's good advice as well. ]