I recently needed to purchase a new laptop for my (non-musical) work, which involves heavy computations dealing with mathematical and physics models. Thus I needed a reasonably fast machine. I ended buying a model with a 64 bit AMD CPU/1G RAM/80GB-HD-5200rpm, and I'm running both Windows XP Pro and Linux (the latter versions of Linux already take advantage of the 64 bit processing power). After having read so many posts - specially by Frank Rosenthal - about Soft Synths, attempting to make my own experiments was a too big temptation. The on-board sound board is crappy, so I went on, bought a PCMCIA Creative Audigy 2 ZS (asio drivers - 2.0), and loaded a couple of free soundfonts with the help of Forte Ensemble. I'm still fiddling around with the software, trying to find a good compromise between latency and quality, but I like what I hear. First impressions are that one can sound very good with free stuff only. The idea of a huge choice of sounds of the highest quality in a small box, is very appealing to me. The laptop is an inseparable tool of my working life and adding the making of music is great. Wherever I go, I just have to find a mute keyboard, select the midi channel and play my favourite instruments with the best quality. For now, I do not intend to install any arranger software, only play single instruments, or simple splits/layers, but who knows later I decide to take the time to check how playable (live) is a computer arranger?... Thanks to Frank Rosenthal with whom I learned so much.

-- José.