Computer home recording gear

[sylnau]

It's time to replace my old computer... I want a Windows 7 64 bits environements with a good soundcard for recording (with no latency).

Would you suggest a laptop with a firewire soundcard or a desktop computer with a PCI soundcard (probably M-Audio)?

I want to use Propellerhead Reason and maybe Cubase.

I would prefer a laptop, but I'm not sure a firewire sound interface would be noise free and without latency for recording?

Any of you ILFer have recommendations for home recording gear?

[symbolique]

Laptop, though you could get a Sager/Clevo laptop for PC power and PC internals with the portability. I've had it 4 years and it still smokes. Quad core 2.4, with 3 HD inside, one for purely o/s, one for recording, one for all my size hungry VSTi's. Mine also had an esata 2.0 connex for external speed (I used to run VSTi's via it with no loss of speed).

I use firewire, no noise, just 2ms latency and I'm happy with that into Cubase. Pretty sure new firewire externals are next to 0 latency these days. I use presonus, budget but they work.

[sylnau]

Laptop, though you could get a Sager/Clevo laptop for PC power and PC internals with the portability. I've had it 4 years and it still smokes. Quad core 2.4, with 3 HD inside, one for purely o/s, one for recording, one for all my size hungry VSTi's. Mine also had an esata 2.0 connex for external speed (I used to run VSTi's via it with no loss of speed).

I use firewire, no noise, just 2ms latency and I'm happy with that into Cubase. Pretty sure new firewire externals are next to 0 latency these days. I use presonus, budget but they work.

Thanks... I was tinking about getting a Lenovo W520 (laptop). With an external M-Audio or Presonus soundcard.
So now in 2011... FireWire is as good as PCI?