"Ultra Portable laptops" - will they run Hauptwerk?

Browsing through the Argos catalogue yesterday I noticed a new type of computer - “Ultra portable laptops”. These have a fanless design, and with 2GB RAM and 32GB “hard drive” (eMMC) they would seem to have just enough computing power to run Hauptwerk. CPUs include Intel Celeron N2840 or Intel Pentium N3540 – are these fast enough?

My thinking is that such a machine could be useful for adding a small second organ to complement the ranks of a more comprehensive organ on a more powerful computer. The fanless design should make them silent – a great attraction for a musician – and they're very reasonably priced at around £200.

[mdyde]

Hello organsRgreat,

As long as they meet the Hauptwerk prerequisites ( https://www.hauptwerk.com/clientuploads/documentation/PDF/HauptwerkPrerequisites.pdf ), with a supported version of Windows (N.B. not Windows RT), then I'd expect them to be able to run Hauptwerk, at least to some extent.

I think you'd find the performance of computer's like that disappointing (by today's standards), though, especially with regard to polyphony and loading speeds ( http://www.howtogeek.com/196541/emmc-vs.-ssd-not-all-solid-state-storage-is-equal/ ). I also wonder whether they might struggle to run current versions of Windows for reliable real-time low-latency audio (since Windows will be doing things in the background as well). Personally, I wouldn't consider them.

I tried on my small Asus with Windows home edition. And I put it up to 2Gb.
Yes it did work but?
It took a long time to boot and it just ran St Anne's but with not much polyphony. In the end I bought a new laptop with 8Gb I5.

All very helpful - thank you. Evidently there is not enough power in these devices to run Hauptwerk efficiently. However, the idea of a fanless, and therefore silent computer is appealing, with SSDs making it possible to replace an electro-mechanical hard disk.

So in what way are these ultra portable laptops lacking? Is 2GB of RAM the problem? Presumably when Hauptwerk loads an organ it moves samples and the CODM into RAM, and if there's not enough memory, or it's not fast enough, I can see why there would be problems.

If I wanted a fanless laptop specifically to run Hauptwerk easily, what should I be looking for in terms of RAM, CPU speed etc?