626: Running Sibelius on Netbooks

Although Sibelius is not officially supported on Netbook computers, we have found that in some cases it can work well enough to use the software. If you are planning on using Sibelius on the move for any serious work, it is a far better solution to buy a good quality laptop.

The most common problem on a netbook is that the sound will be crackly or distorted due to the computer being underpowered. We recommend that you use your computer's built-in midi-synth sounds for playback rather than Sibelius Essentials, to save on system resources.

You may also experience a delay when entering notes using a midi keyboard. This is due to high latency in your on-board sound chip, and can often be rectified by attaching a good quality USB ASIO-compatible sound card.

Netbooks that feature Intel Celeron or Atom processors, or AMD Athlon Neo processors use a technology called SpeedStep, which can intelligently slow down the clock speed of the processor to improve battery life. This can cause a problem if the core clock speed of the processor dips below the Sibelius system requirement of 1.4GHz. You will need to disable SpeedStep in order to use Sibelius.

Netbooks also tend to have a very low display resolution. The minimum required resolution for Sibelius 6 to work correctly is 1024x768. It is recommended that you run Sibelius in 1280x1024 resolution or higher. If your netbook does not support resolutions as high as this you'll find Sibelius' Toolbar is automatically reduced to fit the screen size. There are preferences in Sibelius 6 to hide and show the Toolbar icons you need so all the features are accessible.

Please note that Sibelius Technical Support are unable to help if you experience problems running Sibelius products on your netbook.