What should I look for in a laptop I intend to use for composition?

What laptop brands do you recommend - in general and for composition in particular? What particular specifications should I look for? I intend to replace my old malfunctioning desktop with a laptop.

In my very personal opinion I don't recommend any laptop, if you really need your computer to be portable, ok, but if not, don't buy laptops.

The requirements are more or less the same you need most of things, Processor and ram, (Hard disk, but usually they come big enough in all). The processor is the one who plays your piece, the ram is where your samples will have to be loaded, so the recommendation is easy, pick a (multi-core) processor as faster as you can, and a fair amount of RAM, these days 2GB is a minimum thing, 4GB is beginning to sound better, 8GB would be quite good, 16Gb...

Oh, one thing I can say, whatever you do, don't buy Sony Vaio are the worst laptops I've seen and I have had to repair, they are a piece of junk, and quite expensive (safer to buy Acer )

In my very personal opinion I don't recommend any laptop, if you really need your computer to be portable, ok, but if not, don't buy laptops.

Any particular reason why?

Mostly because I'm used to upgrade my computer parts, changing only what I need to change, laptop parts are expensive, if you want a more advanced hardware you have to buy it external, heat is a problem of durability for the reduced space, laptops are dificult to assamble, so you have to buy a brand one, which costs more, expansion ports like PCI are limited, all pieces are in mini form, that is more delicate, screen are usually smaller, you can't connect very much stuff to the laptop because the ac adaptor is not as "strong" as the power supply inside a desktop one, they only have 2 memory slots, you have less choices on buying memory dimms, usually if you really have to upgrade memory, you have to replace both dimms and the original ones become unused part you have to sell, etc etc etc laptops are expensive toys, computers ? Those are the ones you have in a desktop

You don't need much at all to compose on the computer. Sibelius 6 system requirements:

Windows XP 32-bit SP2 or later, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1 or later, Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit
512MB+ RAM
550MB hard disk space,
DVD-ROM drive

Any laptop built in the last 3-4 years would run it with no problem at all.

What about sound card requirements? The computer I have cannot play different parts with different instruments at the same time. I am guessing that it's a limitation in the sound card. The program I am using is Music Time 2.

Maybe I misuderstood what you meant by "general composition" Notation software don't much resourses yes, but if you not only what to make look good but sound good too, the you use samples and that's when requierements are important, as much ram you have more instruments can be loaded at once, as faster your processor may be, better will be your playback,

You don't need much at all to compose on the computer. Sibelius 6 system requirements:

Windows XP 32-bit SP2 or later, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1 or later, Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit
512MB+ RAM
550MB hard disk space,
DVD-ROM drive

Any laptop built in the last 3-4 years would run it with no problem at all.

agreed. my computer (which is a laptop) is 4 or 5 years old actually, and although it has a few glitches and bumps and things, it really works quite well. Too bad the actual computer we had crashed and I lost all of my pieces from when I was 4 and 5 and 6