XXHighEnd

I just sent this message off to an audiophool and thought it might be worthwhile to post here if someone is looking to put together a computer for XXHE.  Here are some reasons I picked up a laptop.

***The computer I'm running XXHE on is a Laptop with a Pentium 1.73 GHz cpu.  Right before doing a clean install of Vista Premium OEM full version (picked it up at Frys for ~$100 US) I upped the ram from 512 k to 2000 k.  I usually build my own comps, but I bought the laptop because it's quiet and can run on battery (not really a big deal).  Another good thing I think is it uses a touchpad for moving the curser and built in keyboard; means only 1 thing, my Stello USB-DAC, is plugged into usb port.  My Hard Drives are all daisy-chained using Firewire 400.  Only program I loaded on there is XXHE and shut off a few things (no software firewall, defender, computer sounds...), so I don't load the laptop down much... it's working without any hickups; I didn't run into any problems at all. Very easy install.  Oh, fwiw, I also didn't install any drivers for the onboard soundcard... so computer doesn't see it. [shrug].  If you have any other questions give me a holler.  Love to hear about your dac project, and your experience with XXHE.  As I've mentioned, I'm ecstatic with it; finally feel I've reached what I thought a computer front end should do. I had to use an asio wrapper with foobar (tried both asio4all and asio2k; used asio2k), maybe one reason I had such good success with XXHE (no need for asio). (I was for sure getting around kmixer before with foobar/WinXp). ***  oh, I think this can avoid some problems too about admin stuff... when I load an OS (Vista) on I never enter a password when it asks me to create one... that way I always boot right into the os and don't have to log on as a user.... one less button to push... [shrug again] no big deal.

best,
Dave