That Alienware is certainly very impressive Paul and I like the upgradeability. The screen though, I think, has only 70% SRGB coverage so that isn’t going to cut it for photo editing.
The Razer Blade Pro is very interesting because it only weighs a bit more than the 2011 MBP that I have on my knees now.
What I am seeing generally with the higher end laptops is 4kg+ which is really desktop use only.
Razer seem to have taken a leaf out of Apple’s pricing book 
I am not seeing much information on support on their site - no extended warranties, service contracts, onsite engineer options etc. That’s a bit poor for a £4k computer.
Had an interesting chat with custom system builder Pete at Scan Computers and these two are in play:
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/3xs-scan-performance-17-studio-laptop-no-firewire
A kilogram difference between them (and about a grand once they are configured up with extra drives etc).
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Wow, those look great for the price! This cheaper one seems plenty good enough for Rack. What’s the gpu on the more expensive one with that i9? At first i was thinking the 256GB SSD on these was small but i looked on my pc and i guess i only use 110GB out of 500GB, so now i’m thinking i didn’t need all that.
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The bigger one has an 8GB 1080. Overkill for me. What the guy does with the big ones though is put desktop processors in them and massive cooling systems. Super powerful but not on your knees!
I’m pretty much made up with the cheaper one, which I will upgrade to a 500GB SSD and add a 2TB HDD. That’ll suit me fine for a dual boot setup with Ubuntustudio, and all at 1/3 of the price of the MacBookPro. Really hope it will do the job OK. We shall see 
I’m actually feeling quite excited about using Rack on Linux. Loomer’s new Architect modular Midi monster is on Linux and now Bitwig is going all modular with version 3 and that is on Linux too.
Yesterday the 2011 MBP finally shuffled off this mortal coil. It was one of those afflicted with the GPU problem, had had three logicboard replacements under its 6 year UK consumer rights but it expired yet again. The last logicboard did last 2 years to its credit.
So, finally, I have a PC laptop arriving tomorrow. A 17” HP G5 ZBook workstation (ie brick … no … paving slab 
), with an i7-8850H (2.6/4.3) and P3200 Quadra. Geekbench has it just under my 2015 6700K iMac on single core, and it surpasses it on multi, and the graphics are roughly on a par with the AMD395X in the iMac, with less pixels to push. Hopefully it will be up to the task.
I have been toying with which distro. I had been considering various Ubuntu flavours but having just picked up the thread on cmake being stuffed on Ubuntu for compiling Rack I am now leaning towards Manjaro.
Anybody running Manjaro? Any thoughts?
EDIT: please answer here instead:
maybe to make your post get the right attention, shouldn’t you rename the title to: Linux distro advice/help ?
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this is concerning. I don’t have these kind of issues on a 2017, although it required using the threaded version of rack to fix it up. I get some issues when using camtasia and vcvrack at the same time, so I’m assuming its something to do with the hardware refresh 
and I was pretty much almost checked out with one of the new i9 8 cores.
has anyone tried vcvrack with a egpu unit and mbp?
YMMV. Here’s the info I discovered along the way.
T2 problems:
This is the crackling thread on MacRumors:
Which seems to cover a plethora of issues. This is a better thread on GS:
The issue in the first post was reproducible by me.
I believe RME have now reported that 10.14.4 has fixed the problem with Thunderbird audio interfaces, but the problem appears to persist with internal audio and USB.
This is the flickering thread on MacRumors:
The video at the bottom of the page shows exactly the issue I was having. I don’t think all of them have it.
Overheating:
[Even though the HP Zbook I have ordered has vastly better thermals than the MBP, I have deliberately not put an i9-8950 in it but an i7-8850 in the hope that it will run cooler - I’m not sure any laptop is really up to running an i9 under the sort of sustained load that virtual modulars create.]
‘Flexgate’:
The keyboard problem:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bjtyaw/macbook_pro_keyboard_failures_why_apples_dust/
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geez lol
so i would imagine v1 will not make things much better 
what a bummer, switching away from macOS for my main will probably be a huge pita
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Yep. I can’t tell you how f**king angry, disappointed and frustrated I am with Apple. Maybe when they move their MBPs to ARM matters will improve.
You’re right but I have added the Linux question to your Linux thread instead.
thinkpad, I had a lenovo thinkpad (6 years ago) and It has been the best laptop that I have owned until today, it work wonderful with Linux and windows ( you can use dual boot because windows is a great OS with hundred of audio software and Linux is a really flexible modular audio system) the range of prices is very good, and the quality is the best. one os the cons that I remenber is that is so heavy, but you said you not care
you know, from my point of view that shit of Mac is the best is a Myth, I used to distributed render a farm of mac I7 (the cylinder ones) beside a farm of I7 pc clones, sometimes Linux won and sometimes windows, never apple
Too late.
17" ZBook on my lap - came at lunchtime. Delighted with it. Have hit it with my biggest patches and it has not topped 70 degrees. The i9 MBP would go into the 90s on half a dozen modules.
Not delighted with Windows however, it has not become any less horrible since I last used it in 2006. Will get Linux on it soon.
Cheers.
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nice, enjoy!
it is my Linux Audio Survival Kit it is a work in progress but can be useful to you
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i would love to hear from anyone that has the latest 8 core mbp on how things are running.
Simon Stockhausen (SampleConstruct - Patchpool) has reported that he is having no problems with it with a Thunderbolt Audio Interface over on KVR:
He’s not a Rack user to my knowledge though.
And about graphic card? AMD or NVidia
Happy to hear it Nik! When you’ve broken it in properly, will you give us a little report, saying how it works for Rack, how the cooling and fans work, and what its strongest/weakest points are? Thanks.
Does anyone in here have any experience with running Rack on a Hackintosh?