Processor question (possibly for Andrew, who seems to know..

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Byron <spamagnet@dorrk.com> wrote:
: For the last 2 years I've used a Sony Vaio, which has worked great
: (excepting that time I dropped and had to take it in for a LCD fix) and
: quickly became my primary work machine.

: Lately, though, I've really been cursing its speed. I started cheap and
: went with a 1.8 ghz Celeron, and even with 768 MB RAM it can be pretty
: sluggish when I'm running a lot of apps (I do web development and so
: often have several graphics and production apps open at once).

What do you mean by slow? You mean when you have several windows up
and you try to switch between them you experience sluggishness and the
clicking of the hard drive? That means you still might not have
enough memory. Try CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to Task Manager when this
happens and see how much memory is free. If you are doing
graphics-intensive stuff even 768MB may not be enough. If you use
Photoshop, several versions of your graphics may be saved in memory.

How much memory can your Sony hold? Is it DDR or just SDRAM?

Or do you see slowness when you are actually doing something like
graphic manipulation?

: So for my new machine I want something a lot faster, and even though
: it's been hard to get my brain around the idea that a Pentium M with a
: slower clock speed will actually run faster than my 1.8 ghz Celeron,
: it's finally beginning to sink in.

It's true! Think 4-cyl vs 8-cyl engine. :-)

: However, I notice that on a lot of machines, HP's for example with the
: bigger screens, certain models only offer P4s up in the 2.4-3.4 range,
: so is there any advantage in going that direction? I have a cooling pad
: if it runs hot (I mean, worst case, it won't melt my hard drive, right,
: it'll just sterilize me?). Is there an element of power (like the HT)
: that these P4s provide that the PM's can't match that is worth
: considering?

Yes, the PM doesn't have hyperthreading, but even with a P4 with HT,
you have to have Windows XP Pro not Home to take advantage of HT, I'm
told. And not all apps take advantage of it.

Even if you don't care about the heat, I worry about the heat these
new P4 CPUs generate in a laptop and long-term reliability. As you
must know Centrino/Pentium M is much more battery efficient. Are you
shooting for a desktop-replacement type system? I have been seeing
more and more of those larger-screen "multimedia" laptops with
Centrino instead of P4.

: I do like the idea of a cooler machine with longer battery life, so I'm
: starting to lean toward a 2.0 ghz M, but I'm still not convinced that's
: the way to go for a production machine.

I admit I rarely tax the CPU power of my 2GHZ Celeron Toshiba laptop.
Converting Canon RAW files from my camera is the most CPU-intensive
task I throw at it, and at that it does fine. But I rarely run a lot
of apps at the same time beyond Firefox and maybe something else.
Still, I was surprised at how fast my Celeron has turned out to be.
CPU performance is rarely an issue.


: BTW, Andrew, I'm a fellow Portlander. If you know a local place to buy a
: good laptop offline, I'd be happy to hear your suggestions.

Depends on your parameters. At the budget end, Fry's has contant
deals on no-name "Great Quality" laptops. I can't say how these might
hold up, and they are obviously not cutting-edge technology, but they
are cheap! Today Fry's had a Celeron 2.4GHZ for under $500, 256MB,
40GB disk. Over the weekend they had a Centrino machine for under
$700, 15" screen (decent display if just a tad dark). They have a
2-week cash refund policy as well (no restocking fee), so you could
try one. Places like Best Buy and Comp USA have restocking fees.

But a great place to buy a laptop is Costco. They have a 6-month
no-questions-asked returned policy. Use it for 5 months and find out
you hate it and go get a refund. Pretty hard to beat that! You can
get the same policy even with stuff you order at Costco.com (including
Dell machines last I checked), nice because their in-store selection
of laptops is usually limited. If you want to try an app, I've been
able to take a CD in before and run stuff on the demo laptops at
Costco. Actually, I've done it at Fry's too, if you can find the
right person.

I would verify that memory is indeed not your problem and if it is
upgrade it and stick with the Vaio if you like it. You might also
consider wiping the hard drive and re-installing Windows from your
install CDs. I have done that for friends recently several times and
the difference is amazing - but these machines were bogged down with
junk and spyware in a few cases.

Andrew
--
----> Portland, Oregon, USA <----
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 23:54:05 -0700, Byron <spamagnet@dorrk.com> wrote:

>In article <ccrkraxcdd96464033211@bizaveMYSHOES.com>,
>usenetMYSHOES@bizaveMYSHOES.com says...
>> Byron <spamagnet@dorrk.com> wrote:
>> : For the last 2 years I've used a Sony Vaio, which has worked great
>> : (excepting that time I dropped and had to take it in for a LCD fix) and
>> : quickly became my primary work machine.
>>
>> : Lately, though, I've really been cursing its speed. I started cheap and
>> : went with a 1.8 ghz Celeron, and even with 768 MB RAM it can be pretty
>> : sluggish when I'm running a lot of apps (I do web development and so
>> : often have several graphics and production apps open at once).
>>
>> What do you mean by slow? You mean when you have several windows up
>> and you try to switch between them you experience sluggishness and the
>> clicking of the hard drive? That means you still might not have
>> enough memory. Try CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to Task Manager when this
>> happens and see how much memory is free. If you are doing
>> graphics-intensive stuff even 768MB may not be enough. If you use
>> Photoshop, several versions of your graphics may be saved in memory.
>
>Thanks for your feedback Andrew. I suspect my problem is mixture of
>processor speed and RAM. RAM-intensive projects running in one app have
>led to the freezing of all open apps a few times, and my load of mail
>stored in Thunderbird had resulted in great frustration even after
>compacting; and some batch processing I do regularly has been taking
>long enough I feel it's affecting my productivity, so I hope to upgrade
>in both areas: memory (start with 1 GB, and maybe go higher after I run
>the new machine for a bit) and processor speed. I feel like I have a
>handle on most of the hardware issues save for the variety of
>processors.
>
>>
>> Yes, the PM doesn't have hyperthreading, but even with a P4 with HT,
>> you have to have Windows XP Pro not Home to take advantage of HT, I'm
>> told. And not all apps take advantage of it.
>
>I use XP Pro.
>
>>
>> Even if you don't care about the heat, I worry about the heat these
>> new P4 CPUs generate in a laptop and long-term reliability. As you
>> must know Centrino/Pentium M is much more battery efficient. Are you
>> shooting for a desktop-replacement type system? I have been seeing
>> more and more of those larger-screen "multimedia" laptops with
>> Centrino instead of P4.
>
>A desktop that can travel if it needs to. I take it out of the office
>maybe once or twice a month, but like to move it around my home office
>quite a bit.
>
>> I would verify that memory is indeed not your problem and if it is
>> upgrade it and stick with the Vaio if you like it. You might also
>> consider wiping the hard drive and re-installing Windows from your
>> install CDs. I have done that for friends recently several times and
>> the difference is amazing - but these machines were bogged down with
>> junk and spyware in a few cases.
>
>There are other practical reasons to get a new machine (chiefly, the
>wife is very excited to inherit the old one, which means I get a new
>gadget with 0 grief), and I like to get the best my budget will allow so
>I catch a few extra months before it becomes obsolete. I'm also
>simultaneously building a new desktop machine, so I can always save the
>extra power like HT for that machine.
>
>I'm just trying to achieve some clarity on the side-by-side comparisons
>between the P4s with HT and the PMs before I make a purchase.


Sounds to me like you need a real big heavy laptop with a separate
keyboard and monitor; they call them desktops. You can put a 10,000
rpm hard drive, a gig and a half of ram and a nice fast processor on
one and really get some work done.