tapestry needs

right now the launch team is praying over a date to begin the public services of tapestry. i can’t really say the date we think we are being led to until we’ve all reached that point. i can say that it is soon enough that i need to start buying some equipment over the next several months. since, many, if not most, of you are experts on some of the equipment i need to buy i thought i might look for some of your opinions. so here’s the list of what i will need to buy in the next several months and what i am thinking of spending.

  • a windows based laptop – i have never bought a windows based laptop and therefore i know next to nothing concerning what i should look for. i’m hoping to spend less than a grand on this. it’s primary purpose will be for projection (a.k.a. powerpoint and mediashout) but i would like to be able to use it for portable video editing. it needs to be rugged and easy to use. any thoughts?
  • a digital camcorder – i haven’t bought a digital camcorder in five years and many things have changed. i don’t need a professional level camera but video will be pretty important so a good quality camera would be nice.
  • powered pa speakers – my research thus far has lead me to qsc hpr 122i’s. i’m open to other ideas if anyone knows something better for the price (around $1,500).

of course, i also have the boring stuff to buy (i.e. tables, chairs, coffee makers, etc.) so if anyone has any suggestions on a place to get good stuff at inexpensive prices that would be cool.

btw, thanks to the many wonderful people who have contributed to the point that we have money to buy these things for tapestry.

my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 52:15
pace – 10:27/mile
weather – 28ยบ/weather

4 Replies to “tapestry needs”

  1. Hey Bob,

    My suggestion to you is to check out the camcorder section of Best Buy, make a top five list, go home, read some reviews, and then purchase the winner from Amazon.

    Regardless of what you get, I would purchase a camcorder that records to a hard disk drive rather than the old mini dv tapes. It’s so much easier loading files into a video editor than running through an entire tape and capturing video.

    Remaining in the HDD Category, I humbly suggest the Canon HG10. After taking a look at many comparably priced camcorders, I felt that the canon had the best picture quality and the simplest controls (I’m not a fan of the sony touch screens).

    I hope that helps.

  2. Well, I disagree with Chris about the camcorder. Record to dv tapes. The hard disk cameras save in mpg format which will NOT edit well or pretty and will require absurd amounts of decoding and recoding. If you want to do any editing, avoid the hard drive cameras.

    There is a great deal of information about these kinds of questions in the Geeks and God forums. http://geeksandgod.com/forum

    You should spend a half hour reading in there before doing anything.

  3. Jill and I have both had great experience with Toshiba laptops. They are very durable (I dropped mine yesterday) and inexpensive. I got mine for less than $700 and it does way more than I need it to.

  4. I agree with Jim – Toshiba’s a good laptop. I’m partial to Dell. I have owned a desktop (P133) and 2 laptops (Inspiron 1500 or 2500 I can’t remember, and now use a Latitude D600). My wife, Cindy, has an Inpsiron with 17″ screen – it’s like having your own video screen. She really likes it. I probably wouldn’t get one with such a large screen – it’s way heavy to carry around.

    Dell is always running specials. Go to http://www.dell.com for current specials. They have great tech support, though I’ve have rarely needed it. I have only called them to upgrade memory.

    Anyway. . .hope that helps.

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