Generally, there's 4 things that matter: CPU speed, amount of RAM, HDD space/type and audio interface. Everything else is irrelevant.

When it comes to the specifics:

No matter what, he'll need a good audio interface, which has been completely neglected here. He'll need to look into a good Express Card/ PCMCIA Card or whatever type of interface so that he'll be able to render with minimum latency and no clicks or pops. He should research which interface has good performing stable ASIO drivers, as that's the deal breaker. RME is a popular brand, but he'll just have to research. You can have a 3k$ setup and terrible drivers that would render it useless..

He'll need a powerful CPU and a good amount of RAM (which I'll get to), especially if he uses synthesizers. Synthesizers are generated from realtime math rather than prerecorded samples that lay on the HDD.

If he has tons of sample libraries, he'll of course need a large hard drive. SSDs will increase polyphony and if he uses Kontakt, it'll also decrease the memory footprint so he won't have to load as much into the RAM. SSDs aren't necessary, but I highly recommend it if he just wants to hop on and make music without waiting for samples to load. Use HDDs for libraries used less frequently.

The amount of RAM he'll need depends on whether he goes 64-bit or not with the DAW program. It's not uncommon for music producers to stick to the 32-bit version because of plugin compatibility and the plain fact that they don't use over 4gb RAM. Generally, you only need that much RAM if you have a large template or you produce orchestral music. Everything else is relatively lightweight. If he produces orchestral mockups, it's not uncommon to have from 16gb to 64gb RAM. Once again, he must have a 64-bit DAW, but not all plugins are 64-bit compatible so it's just something to keep in mind.

If he's serious about this, he there's a forum dedicated to this stuff with a wealth of information about it:

http://www.vi-control.net/forum

Still, many of the answers aren't just laid out there. The average consumer laptop will probably get the job done, but when your projects become professional-grade, you'll have to really do the research.

As a side note: Mac Book Pros tend to be quite popular among producers when it comes to mobile platforms, it seems. Perhaps he may want to look into one of those.

We ask ourselves that same question every year.

What's the point of waiting? Just get an older powerhouse card rather than blow it all on "the world's fastest video card" that'll just be another 100$ card in a couple years. I'm still on my 9800GT. I've upgraded everything EXCEPT the video card. Now I'm probably about to get a GTX560 for the same price I got my 9800GT a couple years ago. I love how prices deteriorate exponentially every year.

Though Windows 8 lacks the old start menu by default, there's still mods to recreate that:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/restore-the-start-menu-and-disable-metro-ui-in-windows-8/18767

I don't have any beef with Windows 8. It's no different than what Windows 7 was when it first came out: pretty colors, but not a practical upgrade for gamers. Then eventually people gave in and now we use Windows 7. The thing is, I think Windows 7 will last a very long time. The only thing that might hinder W7 is if M$ locks DirectX 12 to Windows 8 and DX9-11 become obsolete, but game devs wouldn't do that so soon as even DX9 has aged well. M$ will probably try their best to do that though. Remember how Halo 2 was Vista-only, even though people found a way to get it working on XP?

It comes down to hardware compatibility and DirectX at the end of the day. That's what will force clients to eventually move "forward."

Disappointing. I don't even care about FF7 anymore, seeing this crappy re-release. The only change is that they enabled a higher resolution and slightly better lighting and effects. Woopdy doo.

I think Square got a little too excited. They heard the cries of the gamers demanding a remake and thought they could get away with just tweaking it a little and re-releasing it.

They should have rebuilt the whole game from scratch IMO. Models, maps, real full orchestral soundtrack.

I don't care how good FF7 was originally, this is just unacceptable. I'm thinking of reconsidering what my favorite game was..

Short answer:

No.

Longer answer:

Perhaps, but the descrease would be so slight that it would be negligable. The only adverse effects I've seen is during hibernation. The more RAM you have, the longer it'll take to sleep/wake from hibernation since it's dumping "X" GBs from the RAM to the hard drive. With a standard hard drive, this wait could be up to 10 seconds or more with 8gb of RAM, in my experience. With an SSD, it's not as much of a delay. If you don't use hibernation, disregard what I just said. I only mention that to be blunt about the drawbacks, but generally, more RAM can't hurt. It'll only increase stability and multitask capability. By the sounds of it, I don't think you'll ever deliberately use all your 6gb any time soon. :) I find it hard to do that on purpose, doing normal tasks.

I have 16gb currently and although I can easily use it all, working with audio productions, you don't need as much for gaming. I can easily hit 4gb with BF3 loaded along with 2 Firefox tabs, steam and a couple little utilities in the background. 6gb sounds like a sweet spot for modern games if you're not the type to leave a photoshop project open in the background. 8gb if you're too lazy to close some unnecessary programs.

"PC gaymers" i lol'dlawlessx

Same here. :)

I can understand how it seems that way, but those problems were persistent even when I did fresh installs on the last mobo.

I wanted to share my experiences with my previous motherboard in comparison with my new one. My old one was an Elitegroup IC780M-A. I got it because I was transitioning from an AM2 CPU to an AM3, but didn't want to give up the DDR2 memory. I chose the IC780M-A because it seemed very streamlined and didn't have unneccesary features that I wouldn't need. It also theoretically supported 32gb RAM and it was cheap; around 40 bucks. Since I figured mobos wouldn't effect performance much I swiped it.

It's been an OK mobo, but I didn't realize how bad it was until it died on me (after about 6 months BTW) and I got an Asus M5A97 for 100 bucks. You get what you pay for, so I won't praise the fact that I can now use a USB mouse and perform automatic overclocking, easy tweaks within a beautiful GUI- all within the BIOS. What I will praise is the overall increase in stability. It's not a huge performance boost, but these tiny things really made the purchase worth it:

Need for Speed Shift had a wierd issue where it would run perfectly within the menu.. selecting cars.. selecting a track.. but then turn into a slideshow as soon as I enter the race. Now it's silky smooth all the way.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 worked fine before, but now it seems smoother and more responsive than before.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier wouldn't accept certain input from the KB/M unless I did some wierd trick. Now it works fine.

Shattered Horizon is moderately playable at 1080p now..

My media card reader would sometimes crash the OS. Now it works fine and it's even recognized in the BIOS.

Throughout both mobos, I used the same parts:

Phenom II 955 quad 3.2ghz OC'd to 3.7ghz, nVidia Geforce 9800GT, Xonar Essence STX. The only exception is that I had 8GB DDR2, now I have 16GB DDR3, though I highly doubt that affected performance much.

Perhaps this mobo takes better advantage of the bandwidth, idk, but "I'm lovin' it!" [singing catchy McDonald's melody (that darn advertising really works..)]

I find it funny how college students think an iPad or a cutting edge laptop will boost their productivity when all they'll be doing is surfing facebook or playing Diablo 3. I would know, I watch them from behind. ;) The best gear is found outside of mainstream, it seems.

If you want something useful, get a Lenovo convertible tablet. It's not a gaming PC- though a recent model may not be too shabby in that area- but you'll have far more functionality than an iPad or a standard laptop. It rotates fully into a keyboardless tablet BTW.. It's strange that most pics don't illistrate that.

Edit: Here's a pic for the lazy ones:

+1 to Metroid Prime. I remember playing the demo in Circuit City when it first came out and my jaw was on the ground the whole time. Eventually I got it shortly after getting a gamecube. Not only were the visuals impressive for the time, but the weapon system was genius and the environment was incredibly immersive. Then later on, the addition of different dimensions.. Awesome experience. Now I feel like playing through the game over again, probably via emulator this time around though.