Laptop with 3 USB Controllers?

rsloan1 · 21 Jun 2007 at 14:36

I need to purchase a laptop for a project that needs to have at least 3 USB controllers, using an expresscard/pcmcia to increase the number of controllers is not an option. Besides this it needs to have the followng though I think they'll all be covered.

- 3+ USB ports, provided by a minimum of THREE USB controllers
- inimum of 1 Fire-wire port
- 100 gb disk, min 5400 rpm, preferably faster, preferably SATA, and/or RAID
- Preferably PCI Express based graphics with 128mb vram
- Separate MIC/LINE-in and headphone / speaker out
- Min Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
- Min 1gb of RAM

A salesman at Rock said their SL Pro laptop has 5 USB Contollers, 1 for each USB port. Besides Rock does anyone know of anyother laptops that have this? All specs I look at list the number of USB Ports but not the number of controllers behind them. Thanks

Energize · 21 Jun 2007 at 14:48

Whats with all the controllers?

Tosk · 21 Jun 2007 at 14:51

i would go for an Acer Aspire 5101AWLMi

AMD Turion MK-36 2.0gig (512KB L2 cache), 15.4" WXGA TFT Display with Acer CrystalBrite, ATI Radeon® Xpress 1100 integrated 3D graphics with up to 256MB of shared system memory, 1024MB (2*512) DDR2 RAM, 120GB 5400RPM Hard Disk Drive, DVDrw SuperMulti, 802.11b/g Wireless, 6 cell battery 2.5 hours, 5-in-1 Card Reader, 0.3MP Orbicam, Three USB 2.0 ports

all for around £410.00 its a shame ocuk don't sell them tho :/
i bet they would sell well

rsloan1 · 21 Jun 2007 at 14:58

Energize said:
Whats with all the controllers?

It needs to support the recording of quite a few seperate video streams simultaneously

Energize · 21 Jun 2007 at 15:36

rsloan1 said:
It needs to support the recording of quite a few seperate video streams simultaneously

Are you sure the hdd will be able to cope with multiple video streams?

pitchfork · 21 Jun 2007 at 16:02

You'll almost certainly get problems if you record onto a 5400rpm disc, hell, even a 7200rpm disc might not be enough.

rsloan1 · 21 Jun 2007 at 16:11

Without writing up a lengthy post to explain the project, software, and video quality involved, a 7200rpm SATA hard disc will be fine. It's the lack of USB controllers that cause a bottleneck.

Crowze · 21 Jun 2007 at 16:13

Why not use a Cardbus eSATA card and get the full speed from the disks - or a Firewire800 disk or two? USB is a huge bottleneck.

Energize · 21 Jun 2007 at 16:34

Usb isn't going to be a bottleneck. Usb 2.0 is 480Mb/s, good look finding a laptop hdd that surpasses those speeds.

rsloan1 · 21 Jun 2007 at 17:32

Crowze said:
Why not use a Cardbus eSATA card and get the full speed from the disks - or a Firewire800 disk or two? USB is a huge bottleneck.

A cardbus isn't an option unfortunately as some of the software can have difficulties in detecting USBs that aren't 'true USBs' as such. The firewire port will be used but can't be solely depended on as some of the peripherals only come with a USB connector.

Energize said:
Usb isn't going to be a bottleneck. Usb 2.0 is 480Mb/s, good look finding a laptop hdd that surpasses those speeds.

But when using certain USB devices through a software system that includes the Adobe Flash Player for reasons I don't want to get into you don't get 480Mb/s from a single controller to use across multiple devices, infact the Adobe Flash Player for OSX still uses several OS9 sound and video library files that reduces the bandwidth it can support even further.

Rather than debating the bottleneck of a system from its hardware specification, I would really appreciate it if anyone knows of any laptops that contain at least 3 USB controllers.

Crowze · 21 Jun 2007 at 19:12

Energize said:
Usb isn't going to be a bottleneck. Usb 2.0 is 480Mb/s, good look finding a laptop hdd that surpasses those speeds.

Theoretically, but in my experience the best I've had out of any external drive is 30-32MB/sec.

Would it be an option to get a laptop with 2 internal hard disks, with a further option to replace the CD drive with another?

Energize · 21 Jun 2007 at 19:15

Crowze said:
Theoretically, but in my experience the best I've had out of any external drive is 30-32MB/sec.

Then there is something wrong with the drive. Because I've certainly got more than that.

Anyway afaik every laptop has at least 1 usb controller per usb port. Mine lists 5 even though I only have 3 usb ports.

fobose · 21 Jun 2007 at 19:21

All the reviews I have read on external drives are 32-35mb/s using USB 2.0. Using e-sata or sata you would obviously get more though (atleast I would have thought so!).

rsloan1 · 21 Jun 2007 at 20:24

Energize said:
Anyway afaik every laptop has at least 1 usb controller per usb port. Mine lists 5 even though I only have 3 usb ports.

Hmm that's strange as we've had the opposite when looking at laptops. We can find very few, so far only 1 confirmed, that have more than two USB controllers. A HP rep came back to us to say they don't currently have a notebook with over 2 USB controllers and the several laptops we have in the office are the same.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem having multiple USB ports going through a single USB controller but in this case the software that detects and records the USB devices gets very fickly when there's more than one USB device on a single controller. The hard disc and everthing else can handle it fine it's just to get round an annoying limitation of the software that we can't change.

Troop · 21 Jun 2007 at 20:28

I think the Dell Inspiron6400 range will cover all the Specks you have listed,
mine has most of what you need, 4 usb, fire wire etc.