Firewire...I've never had so much trouble.....

I'm a big researcher when it comes to buying things, in fact I drive myself crazy trying not to waste money on stuff that wont work.

I've never had so much trouble in my life until I started researching a new laptop for audio work.

I don't want to buy a Mac.

I need a pc laptop capable of monitoring 10+ tracks with 2-3 vst per track live.

This thing is cool. It has HPF, compression, verbs, delays, eq, etc for 16 channels.

The coolest part is it's a 16x16 audio interface via firewire.

So you can use the onboard effects and vst effects on the computer.

Basically a (glorified digital mixer with a 16 channel soundcard hooked up via an insert snake, except its just 1 firewire cable).

All for under 2k.. In fact I saw one on Ebay for $1500.

Cool huh?

To interface with this I figure I need a laptop at least dual core X 2ghz and 4gb of RAM and 7200 RPM HDD and I'm good to go?

The probelm is firewire chipsets. Apparently there's not a computer made today by a major manufactorer that has a decent firewire chipset.

The only thing with the recommended TI firewire chipsets are older laptops who's specs don't meet what I need to do the vst work.

Even the MacBooks are moving away from the TI chipsets though I'm not currently considering one of those.

Any suggestions?

Does anybody have a recent pc laptop and a firewire interface that runs smoothly?

In particular a presonus firewire interface?