Soon (in September) my one-year exchange to Japan is finally going to start, but before there is still much bureaucracy and shopping to be done. As for the latter, I have three points, where I could use some advice from different sources, since my budget is limited and I don't want to regret what I've bought later.
1) Laptop / Notebook:
Since my last Laptop broke 2 years ago, shortly after the guarantee expired, I've been using a tower PC, but of course I can't take that one with me to Japan, so although my experiences with Laptops have been bad so far, there's now no way around buying a new one. I'm bad with technical details, but here is what the laptop should be able to do: [btw: pricewise I plan on 600 - 800 Euro for this]
It should be able to:
- act out HD-Videos as well as to do HD-Video Rendering with certain programs --> I want to perpetuate my Japan-linked YouTube channel while I am overseas
- run with a line voltage of 100V [Japan has lowest worldwide] without the power supply accumulating any damage ... of course, it should be able to handle 230V as well when coming back to Germany ^_^
- let me do "paper-work" easily, thus the keyboard should be in good shape [as for my former laptop, single letters tended to fall out ...] --> as for the size of the Laptop 15-17 inches would be best, no more or less.
- sufficiently cool itself. My previous Laptop's expensive graphics card broke due to overheating, so I don't need an expensive graphics card for playing the newest games or anything like that. I just want to avoid overheating, since the Japanese summer alone can be hot and humid enough.
2) Microphone / Headset:
For my Japan Youtube channel, I want to buy a really good standing microphone or headset with the main focus being on the quality of voice recording, with as little as possible background noise and swooshing. My current headphones and webcam microphone are cheap and you heard that when I recorded voice for the channel videos. My video cam's microphone is much better, but it sometimes produces an annoying cheeping sound for several minutes. With that said, I want to spend a maximum of around 70 Euro to buy a new standing microphone or headset with the main focus being on good voice recording quality.
3) Video editing & rendering program:
Up until now I've still been using Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 for editing my Youtube channel videos and rendering them when finished as well. But since that program is becoming dated, I'm currently looking for alternatives. Pricewise I would like to invest a maximum of around 80 Euro for the program. In that segment, there exists only Adobe Premiere Elements, Corel VideoStudio Pro X6 (newer version of mine) and MAGIX Video Deluxe, as far as I know. So if anyone has experience with the Adobe or MAGIX video editing programs (or the newer version from Corel), or can even fairly recommend other unknown programs, I would really like to hear about it
So if you've read up until now, thank you very much. If you have any experience regarding the matters above, I would be very happy to hear about it, since these are fundamental investments for my year in Japan and beyond that.
Greetings,
Flo
