I'll be starting the film and moving image course and Leeds Met this September and so I thought that now would be a good time to get a new computer and some decent software. According to this website they use Avid Xpress at Leeds met (presumably the studio version?) so I was thinking of getting the cheaper version. I would also want a laptop to run it on, although I understand it would need to be a fairly good one in order to run it properly. To get to the point, is there any benefit in this, and if so could anyone recommend a laptop capable of running Xpress pro?
The best thing will be to wait until you're a student and buy the student version: you'll get a huge discount over the full price then. You can download the 'Free DV' version for free to play around with the interface and do basic editing before then.
The downside is that officially you can't use it for for-profit movies, but Avid regularly offer upgrade deals for a relatively low price.
I'm not sure about laptops, but any fairly decent laptop with an nvidia graphics chip and a supported sound chip should work.
If you go to the AVID website you can find the minimum specifications for laptops and desktops required to run AVID programs. By doing this it will ensure you have a machine capable of running the software.
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