Music Production on a Netbook

It wasn’t that long ago that producing music (in a  Windows environment) in your bedroom required a powerful desktop PC, or if you wanted to make music on the go, you would need to carry around a large, heavy laptop (that would usually run like a furnace).

However, after receiving my Acer Ferrari One netbook last week, I decided to see how it performs when running Propellerhead’s latest software: Reason 5 (although Reason 6 will be released at the end of September).

To install it, I had to use an external USB DVD drive (as the netbook doesn’t have an optical drive) and the whole program installed in under 10 minutes.

Once complete, Reason took about 20 seconds to load up, and I was presented with the demo song.



Reason 5 Splash Screen

I spent a couple of hours playing around with Reason 5, and it is excellent.


Replacing a laptop optical drive with an SSD

Today I will be showing you how to install a solid state drive in your laptop, alongside the existing hard drive.

The primary reason for doing this is so you can run Windows from a small (and relatively cheap) solid state drive (mine is 60GB) while still storing all you music/games etc on a bigger hard drive (I have a 500GB Hitachi).

First of all, I purchased a solid state drive. I bought this one as it has relatively good read/write speeds and has TRIM support.

Secondly, I went here and bought an optical bay hard drive caddy. This will replace your existing CD/DVD or Blu-Ray drive.

While waiting to receive my SSD and optical drive caddy, I made a disk image backup of my existing 500GB hard drive (I’d recommend you do this in case you need to revert back to the existing hard drive in the future).



The SSD, drive caddy and the laptop



Acer Ferrari One QuickReview

The key points you need to know.

• Firstly, this is more than just a netbook. The dual core processor and 3GB of RAM make it very speedy.

• Secondly, it looks awesome.

Many reviews have said the glossy red lid is garish, but if you're like me, then you like technology that stands out, that turns heads. The Ferrari One does just that.

The red glossy lid sporting a Ferrari badge gives this netbook an almost premium feel