[PD-ot] how low (latency) can you go?

[Bryan Jurish]

... or: "the power of the darkside"
... or: "how i hope to learn to stop clicking and love live processing"
... or: "yet another frequently annoying question"

morning all,

my burning questions, to any and all mobile pd users who feel inclined 
to respond, are:

(A) what is the lowest (stable) latency you can achieve with pd and the 
laptop of your choice?

and

(B) is the onboard soundcard on said laptop tolerable (A/D-D/A sync, 
general quality, etc.)?  [i realize it probably won't be great; i just 
can't afford a hammerfall, my quattro is basically crap, and the adc on 
my terratec usb is thoroughly unsatisfying]

Motivation: as avid readers of pd-dev may recall, my trusty old laptop 
was stolen last week (*schneef*), which is all very annoying etc. 
(fingerprint powder is a right $/%&! to clean off of a white 
windowsill), but does at least give me the chance to improve on some of 
its less desirable qualities when choosing its replacement, so yes, this 
is one of those "what's the best laptop for running pd" mails (profuse 
apologies; feel free to flame me, but we haven't had one on the list in 
at least a month now ;-)

so far, my favorite linux candidates are ibm(lenovo) [older T or newer 
R] or dell, but upon consideration, i realize that the dark side of the 
force (Apple MacBook(intel)/OS-X) does indeed have a certain allure. 
the specs are pretty much identical, but the dark side does have a 
growing attraction as i become older and lazier... so: anyone out there 
with direct experience of both mactel & linux willing to commit on the 
issue of audio performance?

marmosets,
	Bryan

-- 
Bryan Jurish                           "There is *always* one more bug."
jurish at ling.uni-potsdam.de      -Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology