Garageband with a 12" PowerBook?

[mklos]

Has anyone ran Garageband on a 12" PowerBook? I was wondering how well it ran. I have someone who wants to switch the Mac and buy a 12" PowerBook for Garageband as he is in a band and wants to use it. With the hard drive spinning so slow it seems to me like it wouldn't run well at all. I have a 1 GHz iMac and it runs just ok for me and I'm not even doing any hardcore things with it.

He was going to get an iBook, but that doesn't have an audio line-in port so its kind worthless for him to get an iBook.

 

[trailblazer]

i dont have any problems at all with mine.
although, upgrade the memory
256mb doesnt cut it.

 

[fingers]

Has anyone ran Garageband on a 12" PowerBook? I was wondering how well it ran. I have someone who wants to switch the Mac and buy a 12" PowerBook for Garageband as he is in a band and wants to use it. With the hard drive spinning so slow it seems to me like it wouldn't run well at all. I have a 1 GHz iMac and it runs just ok for me and I'm not even doing any hardcore things with it.

He was going to get an iBook, but that doesn't have an audio line-in port so its kind worthless for him to get an iBook.

A G4 iBook would be ok with an external audio i/f (and if the rumours are true then apple will be making quite a tasty little stereo number) - but as your friend is in a band I would expect that he would want to record more than 2 tracks at once - which is not possible with GarageBand. Maybe Logic Express and a multi input i/f would be a better bet? But then again the budget starts to rise...

My daughter has a 12" G3 iBook and GarageBand will run but is pretty limited.

 

[mklos]

i dont have any problems at all with mine.
although, upgrade the memory
256mb doesnt cut it.

Well I want to know if you're having any trouble using a 12" PowerBook with GarageBand. If thats what you meant, then how are you using it? Do you have many loops and tried recording at the same time? This is the kind of thing that I need to know.

Apple seriously needs to optimize the whole app. It even looks a little sluggish on a G5 which is sad!

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

As I understand it, Garageband is not intended to be an application that is used by professional musicians (although it appears that many do - but primarily as a sort of musical notepad). I suspect that multi-track recording is best done with other software (I know not what, but I'm sure there are plenty of programs) and hardware that has a higher-spec than an iBook.

I use Garageband on my PB. It records ok, it handles several tracks ok, but in its current configuration my PB doesn't handle more than ten to fifteen GB instruments very well. I'm sure that the PB hardware might handle more instruments if I were to use other s/w, but at the same time it may well lose the integration with iLife (which is more important to me).

Horses for courses.

Have a look on one of these sites: Garageband.com , or Macjams.

 

[fingers]

Well I want to know if you're having any trouble using a 12" PowerBook with GarageBand. If thats what you meant, then how are you using it? Do you have many loops and tried recording at the same time? This is the kind of thing that I need to know.

Apple seriously needs to optimize the whole app. It even looks a little sluggish on a G5 which is sad!

On a 667 PB it worked ok - but not great. On a 1.5GHZ PB GarageBand runs pretty decently. Certainly very useable. The biggest cpu hog are the software instruments. Loops and audio tracks aplenty on a G4 PB.

Sure it would be cool if Apple could reduce the cpu load - but i doubt if they will be able to do that much.

I tried GarageBand on my brothers new G5 iMac yesterday. I set the processor performance to Highest and did a track count. I was very impressed. He has 768mb Ram and I got 37 tracks (a mixture of software instruments, apple loops and real audio) I probably could have got a LOT more. I didn't see anything sluggish about it.

 

[fingers]

Have a look on one of these sites: Garageband.com

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