[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

if I attempt to move them

i pity the fool... truly

the laptop should be able to handle the input as it as this is only 2 channels of audio and probably only usb1 which is low bandwidth, like 12Mbps.

if you get stutter, that's cuz maybe it's usb2 and the bottleneck is not the cpu but disk speed, as often laptops have 5400rpm (or slower) speeds (down to like 4200rpm for some large drives)

before you capture, make sure you have enough space (about 700MB per record if you're doing WAV capture, less if you're catching compressed files), and that your disk was, oh what is that thing you do with windows, DEFRAGMENT.

IF you get stutter in spite of this, only if you do, then just get yrself and external drive, preferrably on a completely different bus, like firewire. make sure its a 7200rpm drive.

that way your macheen will be able to function as a mere pipe between the usb and the external drive.

you can get one cheap off newegg or amazon or you can buy an enclosure and build your own, but i'm not sure that as a girlie man you're qualified to perform such tasks. if that's the case, you can always hire a butch lesbian to do the job. labor costs are high though so there's plenty of readymade. i'd send you to walmart but they often don't have drives with FW interface-- you could try ratshack but they are inferior and overpriced whereas walrats is inferior but aptly priced (cheeeeeep).

for mac i like the lacie quadra d2 1TB, they have fw400/800, usb, eSata, and can be daisychained (how girlie does that sound), but might be too much for what you need (big, pricey, awesome).

there are also external bus-powered hard drives for laptops (2.5", encased like a cig box) but you need to have 6-pin firewire not 4 or a FW800 (which i doubt your xp macheen has) to bus-power it (you can still transfer but not power w/ 4-pin). if not bus-powered you can always use the power supply they come with, but the point is, it can be a 7200rpm drive and small and portable, and when you flee home dodging missiles of boiling ectoplasm you can hide it in your cargo pants.

if nothing works do what nicfit sez. he's 100% right you know.