… Lenovo S10 as VST rig? …

I’ve thought a lot about creating a portable and versatile keyboard/electronic music rig. When the Asus EEE PC was released late last year, I kept my eye on the little computer to see if it could handle itself as an audio host and live keyboard rig.

There were two major problems:
1) The 900 MHz CPU
2) The 800×640 screen

My new Lenovo S10 (like almost every other netbook on the market) has a 1024×600 display and a 1.6GHz CPU, but is it up to task?

I downloaded VSTHost and loaded up some VST instruments. Most of them played back well through ASIO4ALL (a free low latency driver). I think I could get even better performance by getting a dedicated soundcard.

VSTHost even allows you to play the VST instrument using your computer keyboard. It’s hard to tell if using a QWERTY keyboard creates some lag in the response, so my next test should be to use a real MIDI controller.

Here is a little tune I pecked out on my keyboard using VSTHost and Dimension Pro VSTi.

Enjoy!