[john_jcb]

Has anyone done any comparisons of CD players that come with say a Dell laptop and portable players. I travel alot and wonder if I would be better served bringing a portable player for listening instead of my laptop.

John B

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Yes. Laptop and dedicated portable player output just cannot compare unless your laptop has a digital out and you're using an external DAC and headphone amp.

 

[Igor01]

Not to mention the advantage of much longer battery life on a portable, even if you have a spare battery for your laptop.

 

[Lizard_1]

Quote:

Originally posted by john_jcb Has anyone done any comparisons of CD players that come with say a Dell laptop and portable players. I travel alot and wonder if I would be better served bringing a portable player for listening instead of my laptop. John B

You gonna be sick of booting up your portable.

 

[The Quality Guru]

I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 notebook with a mammoth 1.2 gig Pentium III. I could never stand to listen to music from it because of the (a) Fan noise- which is a lot for such a processor (b) horrible electro-magnetic noises that would make goofy intermmitent sound that are easily heard through earphones
(c) the transport on a laptop CD player is CRAP- the transport in your portable CD player is made just for music, not for watching DVD's or digitally extracting like a computer's CD drive is for. A laptop CD transport is NOT made for music.

My opinion: Get a portable CDP. Better battery life. Much better sound. No computer beeps or distractions. Better transport on a PCDP. And, better portability with a PCDP . . . you can take many of them almost anywhere.

 

[Driftwood]

I agree with all of the above.

I have tried the headphone jack on a couple laptops, and they are only there so the manufacturer can add it to the list of features. It is the same story as sony et al including headphones with the pcdp. It is so they can say all you need is included.

You can get away with a laptop by using an external DAC, but why bother? Better to get a pcdp.

I really liked my panasonic sl-s290 back in the day, now I use the D-25. I can't really speak on any current models though.

Driftwood

 

[leon]

Sony's engineers said they engineered the Vaio SR so that there's no electro-magnetic noise in the phones jack. But hey, this is Sony, I take 20-30% off their claims.

 

[discoman]

My ibook phone jack sound better than Panasonic SL-SX469V. Watching DVD on it w/ V6 is quite good. Vaio is quite good as well, I listened to it for a few minute on mp3, it is listenable. Sorry, not idea on Dell.

 

[john_jcb]

Thanks to all that responded. I think I will get a player to take along. I still need to lug my PC for work but I also can watch the occasional movie on a long flight. Now the harder part selecting a good player.

John B