modern minimal laptop setup for someone well out of the loop...

MLten80

afternoon.
 don't usually venture to this subforum so, hello..

I haven't made an music for time & still have my bulky old desktop pc/midi keyboard/mixer combo working
 but I'd like to go super minimal & donate my desktop to my mate/old musical collaborator

can some of you lot get me back in the loop (lol, loop) on some suggestions of gear?

*decent enough laptops, to run cubase & plugins 

* suitable low latency external midi sound card or interface

*small 4 channel mixer (perhaps a combo of the above too?)

 & perhaps 30 key mini keyboard (not sure the old edirol 30 still works)

the smaller& more usb the better
 my prehistoric PC is on cubase 5 on windows xp, so I'm somewhat behind, enlighten me 

cheers in advance any help much appreciated 
 (just a hobbyist so nothing uber pricey hey)

 mods feel free to move to 'Studio & recording' if in wrong forum 

John_A

*decent enough laptops, to run cubase & plugins 
Any modern i5 or i7 laptop with 8GB Ram

* suitable low latency external midi sound card or interface
Latency is as much a function of the laptop as it is the interface, use 'direct monitoring' instead, i.e. get an interface that allows you to listen to the signal on the way in pre and plugins  Steinberg UR22 can be picked up for £50, lots of others too, have a look in the classifieds

*small 4 channel mixer (perhaps a combo of the above too?)
What do you want a mixer for?  unless you are running external hardware synths or something, dont bother just do it all in Cubase or whatever DAW you go for