? best notebook for portable recording w/Audacity?

[BruceD]

Hi friends, I have skimmed over topics in several categories and not seen anything similar addressed yet. I need to record seminar presentations by pairs of facilitators, two channels of voice input only. The issue I wish to focus on is using a laptop/notebook with Audacity to receive the content from the mixer.

Which laptops/notbooks would be good for this?

Related issues more or less resolved, but comments wecome!:
Yes, I will need a mixer for two or more channels. Got one.
External sound card! i.e. Creative X-Fi Notbook Express will make a big improvement.
I prefer to buy a Thinkpad notebook but still 20 models to play with.
I'm pretty sure needs to be 1Gh or faster in speed,a nd 1Gb or more memory.
Probably the bigger the notebook the better as it will have more sound interfaces in back.

Anyone have a set up or have seen one they can recommend?

Thanks for all your good will. Will try to answer anything I can also.

[kozikowski]

Any laptop with a little glowing Apple on it except the last one. They all have excellent Line-In connections and will interface directly to most if not all field mixers including the mixers with optical digital outputs. I shot all the voice segments for a theatrical short with a quiet room, mic, mixer, headphones, and a PowerBook.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

And if you are a died-in-the wool PC person DON'T get one with Vista on it - see http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2895

WC

[steve]

Many PC laptops will output noise when plugged into the charger, so you will need to check that out (take a pair of good headphones along to your local computer shop and insist that they plug in the charger).

I don't know if this applies to Macs (koz?) but possibly not.

The other major problem with PC laptops is that most of them only have a (poor quality) microphone input and no line level input, which means that you have to get an external audio device. USB audio can be problematic (unstable), particularly the cheap USB turntables, but the Behringer UCA202 is cheap and popular and we don't see too many problems with it on this forum. You still need to check out the noise issue though, even with an external audio device.