| I've had Finale running on 3 desktops, all home made, with no problems. Now these are higher-end machines, two have an Athlon64 with 1 GB RAM and the other is a dual-core Athlon with 2 GB RAM. Two systems are Nforce chipsets and the third has an ATI chipset. Two systems have higher end ATI AGP video cards and the third is an integrated ATI PCI video system. Besides processor and RAM, you should also consider OS. I wouldn't even consider using anything other than WinXP, preferrably PRO, which is what I run.
Bottom line is that in my experience, Finale is far from "finicky," at least on "manly" machines. On a laptop, you'll have a slower and smaller HDD, less RAM and much less power available. These are the kind of things that could impair stability. A computer is like anything else, if the task is close to its limit of ability, it will crash more frequently. It the task is minor relative to the ability of the system, crashes are less likely.
Another reason to take your budget $1000 and use it to buy a real computer (desktop) instead of a toy (laptop).... |