Need Info re) Laptop Computer as Portable Music Server

Why not just get/put together an external hard drive in a USB2 case?

An external drive would be smaller, lighter, and has potential to store much more music than a laptop, not to mention far cheaper for more storage space.

Or maybe a HDD based MP3 player?

I'm certainly not an expert, but I have an old IBM Thinkpad, 700 Mghz, with 192 MB of RAM running Windows XP. It is not a fast machine by any means, but with my Squeezebox 2 connected via a crossover cable to my laptop, it plays my flac files fine, without any drop outs. I have a USB 2.0 300gb external HD connected to the laptop. Actually, this is the system I am bringing to the Detroit meet.

So, any newer laptop will provide plenty of CPU power and memory to serve music. No need for a higher end machine. I would get one that is quiet. I know the Mac and IBM Thinkpads are pretty quiet.

Just about any laptop you can acquire new will have the processing specifications to accomplish what you want from the software end. The problem is that there are very few laptops with an S/PDIF out to connect to your overture/coda, or a reasonable facimile of a headphone/lineout. The newer "Sonoma" platform based laptops based on the Pentium M/i915GM are supposed to be more media friendly that way, but I've yet to see anyone but Sager (expensive!!) take advantage of it.

The best thing to add to any reasonably functional laptop would be something like the M-Audio Sonica Theatre or perhaps a Bithead to use as a transport to your DAC/amp.

So, if you are looking to spend the least amount of money:
- you need a minimum of 256MB to run WindowsXP... 512MB is better... 1GB would be phenominal (or at least the ability to add it later) because I can't imagine Longhorn is going to be less of a memory hog

- Don't get a "mobile Pentium 4"... though they can be somewhat cheap, they eat batteries, are large and unweildy, and can be hot. The Pentium M from Intel is the best thing going, though the Mobile Athlon64 from AMD comes close in terms of heat and energy consumption. You can get the slowest CPU speed available, it's going to clock down anyway when not plugged into a wall.

- You seem to be a canidate for integrated graphics. The A64 solutions tend to have better ones thanks to their ATi sourced chipsets which include a higher grade video solution. The Intel "Extreme Graphics" are less than extreme... but if you aren't playing games, you'll never notice the difference.

- Widescreen is great. Compaq and Sony both have reasonably low cost models using a 13.3-14" 16:10 aspect ratio screen. Highly recommended.

- Integrated wireless is nice, and basically "free" in most new laptops. Sony puts the antennae in the back of the screen, allowing for generally good reception. Netgear also makes excellent PCMCIA cards if you need wireless but can't get it integrated in any model you end up choosing.

- If you have the choice (Dell, some sony's) choose a faster spinning disk drive. For what you will do with it, HD speed is almost always going to be the limiting factor, given that laptops generally come equiped with 4200rpm models. 5400 or 7200rpm should be your goal.

- If you use this at work a lot... a second battery is a life saver. Never leave home without one. ;-) I hate using the power cord for anything but charging at night.

I'd personally go with a 12" iBook or PowerBook, but you may not find it a feasible option...

~KS

Look for the Celeron-M model, not the "Mobile Celeron". There's a difference, despite the similar name. The Celeron-M is a Pentium M stripped of half of its cache... the Mobile Celeron is a Pentium4 berift of cache with some half assed technology added in to allow it to perform in a mobile environment. The Celeron-M was built from the ground up to exhist in a laptop, it has much lower power consumption, as well as greater performance (despite the clock speed difference, a 1.6GHz Celeron-M will outperform a 2.4GHz Mobile Celeron).