Video capturing on the Malibal Lotus P151HM1?

Hi,

I'm planning to buy a P151HM1 for VHS capturing to digitize old home videos. I'm pretty sure the laptop is more than up to the task but I'd appreciate any input before I buy. The specs I'm going for are:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
AC Adapter: Full Range AC-in 100~240V, 50~60Hz, 180W AC Adapter, DC output 19V, 9.47A

I'm capturing the video using a Canopus ADVC 110 which does most of the heavy lifting so I think the CPU/memory combination should be fine. The only worry for me would be the single 7200rpm hard drive. The data rate from the Canopus is much lower than a raw stream but I figure that at worst I can use the eSATA connection to connect an external drive.

The Canopus connects through a IEEE 1394a port but since the laptop presumably has a 4-pin port, I am going to supply power using an adapter.

Does anyone see any problems with the setup?

 

I have used the Canopus ADVC 110 with a 5 year old XPS M1710 and a VCR with absolutely no issues. The Dual-cores where about 70% capacity when using editing software but there was no stutter or slow down. You should have no issues at all with this setup.

 

It doesn't sound like you should have any issues as you've covered most of the bases

If you're worried about transfer speeds, you can always go with a small SSD to use as a scratch disk when copying your files over.

 

Thanks for the replies. I started the capturing today with no issues whatsoever. Taylon is correct - the bitrate of the stream the Canopus creates is only @3.7 MB/s so the laptop has performed sweetly, capturing 3 hours of footage without any dropped frames and that's with me saving the files onto the primary SATA hard drive (I haven't installed the disk caddy yet) and leaving a bunch of other programs open including the usual 50 website tabs.

As an aside, I've been really impressed by the laptop. It took a little while installing all the drivers and waiting for reboots but since the setup it has run super smoothly. Great display, sound, and range of ports for the price. This seems to be one of the few reliable PC laptop manufacturers who still support FireWire in their affordable models.