would firepod work all right in such a system?

[ckushan]

Hi all...
I am planning to buy a Firepod in these days.
I've heard that there are some people having problems with vista and firepod.
My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A100-003.
It has an onboard ti chipset firewire port.
It has 2gb of ram.
The operating system is Vista Home Premium 32bit.
And I work with cubase sx3.
By the way I am using an M-Audio FW410 with this laptop and having no problems.
However I need an 8pre interface for recording drums...
I am waiting for your opinions...
Thanks... :confused:

[jensenm]

By all means buy one and try it out. It's the only way to know for sure. But, do yourself a favour and get one from a place where they've got a good return policy. There are two factors in your setup that just make it hard to know how well the Firepod is going to integrate with your system.
1)You're using Vista. The reviews on this OS are very mixed and driver development for a whole pile of hardware, not just audio, has been slow and tedious. Some consumers are reporting no problems other are wanting to "downgrade" to XP and IT departments are avoiding it like the plague.
2)You're using a laptop. There are whole host of issues with audio on laptops. One consideration is what's your Hard Drive spin at? If it's a 4200 HD then you may very well run into problems. It's pretty rare to find a HD in a laptop spinning at 7200 rpm's but that's standard fare for a desktop. If it's a 5400 then it might be okay. Also the power schemes on laptops seem to interfere with audio sometimes. When you're squeezing all these components into a tight space you need to compromise somewhere. So unfortunately, with laptops in general it's a real crapshoot.
Hope the above helps!