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Thread: MGP: New Laptop?

  1. #14
    MGP
    Guest

    MGP: I took the plunge

    Thank you everyone for all of your input.

    After further researching the matter I found out that AMD had released an Athlon 3700+ DTR (desk-top-replacement) about 2 months ago. It turns out that the performance is actually almost exactly the same as the desk-top 3700+ but with better power-management. I was happy to learn after board-browsing that even though the HP customer service reps had no idea, HP is actually using the DTR chip and people are getting about 3-4 hours of battery life with the 12-cell. No other notebook with that kind of processing power exists with that kind of battery life that I could find, and definitely not at that price. The notebook also has 2 antennaes for the wireless card and stereo speakers as well as other nice things like S-video, built-in 5-in-1 card reader, bluetooth, etc.

    So after talking to the wife - who said, "Merry Christmas," I took the plunge and ordered the HP zv5000z from Costco, which has a 6 mo return policy - just in case something better comes out. I also got the smallest hard disk and smallest memory chip since I found out I can get a much faster hard drive (7200) and more memory (1G and 256MB) for the same price as 1G if I replace the disk and add a 1G chip myself. The biggest adjustment is going to be the huge size. I also found out Costco has the student/teacher Office addition cheaper than the Microsoft site and so I'm getting Powerpoint for $30 more than the Basic Office from HP.

    Anyways, thank you everyone again for all the advice/feedback and I'll let you know how it is when I get it.

    Thanks,
    MGP

  2. #15
    The Phantom
    Guest

    The Phantom: Re: A possible solution

    I also agree that 512 Mb is adequate for most purposes.

    For faster work with existing RAM, try FreeMem software. My experience has been that on my several PC's and Thinkpads, all had increased benchmark scores of 10% or better(NSW/Performance Test/Overall Score) with this memory manager. A free 30-day Pro copy, or a lifetime free Standard copy, is available for download at this link:

    http://www.meikel.com/en/products/freemem/

  3. #16
    MGP
    Guest

    MGP: Re: A possible solution

    Thanks Phantom,

    > For faster work with existing RAM, try
    > FreeMem software. My experience has been
    > that on my several PC's and Thinkpads, all
    > had increased benchmark scores of 10% or
    > better(NSW/Performance Test/Overall Score)
    > with this memory manager. A free 30-day Pro
    > copy, or a lifetime free Standard copy, is
    > available for download at this link:

    > http://www.meikel.com/en/products/freemem/

    I loaded this program for my Fujitsu, and I ran it but I'm not sure how to see if it makes a difference. Unfortunately haven't noticed any in terms of program loading/unloading or running My current computer is pretty slow though - 800 MHz Crusoe with 256MB. I freed 120MB of RAM as suggested. Did I do something or am I testing it wrong?

    Oh - and a quick update - I ended up cancelling the Costco order because I found out HP doesn't charge shipping or tax - so I ordered it directly from HP. I figured the loss in flexibility (5 extra mo return window) is worth $170. Unfortunately, the estimated ship date is Nov 1 and I still need to install the memory chip, test it and change the hard drive when it comes - so it'll be awhile before I can post an update about the battery life in case anyone's interested.

    Thanks again,
    MGP

  4. #17
    The Phantom
    Guest

    The Phantom: Re: A possible solution

    For FreeMem Pro 5.3, you should just set it to its default values, which should optimize the memory settings.

    It should make the PC run both smoother and faster.

    For an objective test of speed you could run a benchmark program, before and after.

    "Performance Test" benchmark is included under Extras in Norton Systemworks. A benchmark program is also incorporated in HardInfo 2003, of which a free trial version for download is available somewhere on the Web. (A good meta-search engine is info.com)

  5. #18
    MGP
    Guest

    MGP: HP Sucks

    So I returned my HP after spending hours rebooting and reloading the HD and sending it back and forth multiple times on a problem that HP was unable to fix on my brand new notebook. The repair people were morons even though the customer service people were very nice.

    Now I just have to find a similar computer that doesn't cost >$4000.

    Don't buy HP - it's not worth the hassle!!!

    Sincereley,
    MGP

  6. #19
    gorilla player
    Guest

    gorilla player: Re: A possible solution

    > You don't have to sell this AMD fan on the
    > virtues of Althons. :-)

    > Most laptops can be configured to do this to
    > some extent. Of course, if you plan on using
    > it on battery a lot, and you're going to
    > underclock the processor to save battery
    > life, you may as well save some money and
    > buy a slower CPU.

    > It will work. How well is another matter.
    > You're not going to get anything close to
    > the 6 hr you mentioned in your original
    > post.

    > BTW, most Linux distros come with power
    > management software that will throttle back
    > the CPU, among other things, to conserve
    > battery life when running on battery. Just
    > thought I'd mention that.

    > Yep, big and heavy. These are the
    > "desktop replacement" systems that
    > I mentioned in my earlier post. I would also
    > have concerns about durability, but then,
    > not everyone is as rough on laptops as I am.

    > BTW, my own idea of an ideal laptop is
    > something like a Toshiba Portege R100 (link
    > below).

    I run a sony VAIO Z-series. 3+ pounds, plenty of power, easy to tote around.

    > Absolutely not. These days, 256 MB is a
    > minimum, 512 MB is adequate for most
    > purposes, and 1 GB is more than you really
    > need, even if you like to run several aps at
    > once. 2 GB is overkill and a waste of money.

    > You can see this yourself. Start every ap
    > you can think of on the system you're using
    > now, then right-click on the taskbar, open
    > the Task Manager, and select the
    > "Performance" tab. You'll probably
    > find that you're not using more than 200 MB
    > or so of memory.

    That isn't all memory is about. You are overlooking (a) demand paging. When you start an application, it isn't completely loaded into memory until you actually run every part of that app. That understates the actual memory requirement. (b) filesystem cache. Memory is also "traded" by the operating system to avoid I/O by caching blocks of the filesystem as they are read/written so that the next time they are accessed, no I/O will be needed. Eliminating a 5ms I/O is a huge performance gain. (c) random system tasks fire up (we call these daemons in the unix/linux world) and need memory, which can cause parts of apps to disappear from memory, only to have to be brought back in later.

    Memory is pretty cheap. As a general rule, bigger is _always_ better if it doesn't grossly inflate the price.

    > You're on your own here. :-)

  7. #20
    Parker
    Guest

    Parker: Re: A possible solution

    > I run a sony VAIO Z-series. 3+ pounds,
    > plenty of power, easy to tote around.

    I've often admired the Sony laptops. My only concern would be whether or not anything that sleek and sexy looking could stand up to the sort of abuse that my laptop has to endure.

    > That isn't all memory is about. You are
    > overlooking (a) demand paging. When you
    > start an application, it isn't completely
    > loaded into memory until you actually run
    > every part of that app. That understates the
    > actual memory requirement. (b) filesystem
    > cache. Memory is also "traded" by
    > the operating system to avoid I/O by caching
    > blocks of the filesystem as they are
    > read/written so that the next time they are
    > accessed, no I/O will be needed. Eliminating
    > a 5ms I/O is a huge performance gain. (c)
    > random system tasks fire up (we call these
    > daemons in the unix/linux world) and need
    > memory, which can cause parts of apps to
    > disappear from memory, only to have to be
    > brought back in later.

    I didn't overlook - I oversimplified. For example, on the system I'm using now, System Monitor indicates 206 MB of memory in use, 59% free. However, if I open KDE System Guard, a more sophisticated utility that also shows buffered and cached memory, I see another 100 MB or so in buffered memory, and another 100 MB or so on top of that cached. Nonetheless, that still leaves about 100 MB free, and my swap partition is doing nothing, so with 512 MB I seem to be okay.

    I'm running SuSE Linux 9.2, which I am quickly finding to be a resource hog. On my laptop (Debian-based system), opening the same aps consumes less than half of the above figures.

    I find that 256 MB seems to adequate for my Windows 2K partitions. I'm not running XP on anything, but I imagine it would be more demanding.

    > Memory is pretty cheap. As a general rule,
    > bigger is _always_ better if it doesn't
    > grossly inflate the price.

    Agreed, although I still maintain that anything over a gigabyte is probably wasted money.

    "640K ought to be enough for anyone." --Bill Gates, circa 1981

  8. #21
    MGP
    Guest

    MGP: Re: A possible solution

    I've had a VAIO and seen many others - all with broken screens - i.e. I'm not buying anymore VAIOs

    I found this interesting article about the amount of memory - it turns out too much can actually slow things down (page 6):

    http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...ookie%5Ftest=1

    Anyways, I found another computer with similar stats that was about to be discontinued. Its coming with a better video card but it's a much smaller company so we'll see if it was worth the risk...

    Sincerely,
    MGP

  9. #22
    Parker
    Guest

    Parker: Thanks - good article

    > I've had a VAIO and seen many others - all
    > with broken screens - i.e. I'm not buying
    > anymore VAIOs

    Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I just couldn't picture tossing one of them into the overhead compartment of an airplane without dire consequences. Too bad -- they sure are pretty.

    > I found this interesting article about the
    > amount of memory - it turns out too much can
    > actually slow things down (page 6):

    >
    > http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...ookie%5Ftest=1

    Excellent article. While the performance hit for too much memory doesn't appear very significant, the important thing to note is that you don't gain anything.

    Which is what I said. :-)

    I am, however, considering upgrading the 512 MB on my home system to 1 GB, when I can find a good sale.

    The article also confirmed my suspicion that all memory (assuming equivalent type, speed, etc.) is pretty much the same.

    > Anyways, I found another computer with
    > similar stats that was about to be
    > discontinued. Its coming with a better video
    > card but it's a much smaller company so
    > we'll see if it was worth the risk...

    Good luck. :-)

  10. #23
    Robert
    Guest

    Robert: Re: HP Sucks

    Ya, I got An HP Laptop About 4 years ago and its been giving me problems sence day one. I've have the floppy drive, HDD, MoBo, RAM, 6 Fans, 4 CD-RW/DVD drives, and 3 screens replaced in the system. I really haven't complaned about it a whole lot because I was covered by warrenty by the retailer that i perchased it through. So, for the past 4 years I've gonthrough about 3 or so thousand dollars of repairs for free. Now, however the warrenty is up and i couldn't renew it so now i'm screewed. By the way the techs won't even fix what is really wrong with the system, because mine needs new connectors but they never installed them.

    rln

  11. #24
    Ed Mcclen
    Guest

    Ed Mcclen: Re: HP Sucks

    I've had the same problems with HP. They really do suck. I am making it apersonal project of mine now to destroy there sales. They remind me of the American auto mfgs. who were making terrible cars and resented the fact that the Japanese cars were selling better here than theres. If you sell garbage as HP does you will pay the price eventually.

    > So I returned my HP after spending hours rebooting and
    > reloading the HD and sending it back and forth
    > multiple times on a problem that HP was unable to fix
    > on my brand new notebook. The repair people were
    > morons even though the customer service people were
    > very nice.

    > Now I just have to find a similar computer that
    > doesn't cost >$4000.

    > Don't buy HP - it's not worth the hassle!!!

    > Sincereley,
    > MGP

  12. #25
    MGP
    Guest

    MGP: Re: HP Sucks

    > I've had the same problems with HP. They really do
    > suck. I am making it apersonal project of mine now to
    > destroy there sales. They remind me of the American
    > auto mfgs. who were making terrible cars and resented
    > the fact that the Japanese cars were selling better
    > here than theres. If you sell garbage as HP does you
    > will pay the price eventually.

    I'm not surprised unfortunately. I had forgotten about this thread but if anyone cares I finally gave up on AMD as I had 3 different AMD laptops with different manufacturers that all had to be returned, one was the above, and 2 others failed to have working cpu power throttling.

    I ended up getting the perfect computer for me from Sager which is unfortunately no longer on the market. It's the 4881 which is a Pentium M770, 1GB dual channel 533MHz ram, 60GB 7200 rpm drive, 15" (not 15.4") screen, and 12-cell battery which lasts easily 4-5 hours typing and about 3-4 hours playing DVD's, and it has an ATI x700 256MB video card which plays Doom 3, GTA easily. It improved the speed of my CA about by about 7x and I'm now actually in the process of converting it to VB from VBA (this is extremely painful btw and I'm taking huge breaks in time due to the pain).

    Anyways, I was very happy with Sager and Discountlaptops (it's the same computer but cheaper from the latter).
    Good luck with your computer search.

  13. #26
    melissa
    Guest

    melissa: Re: HP Sucks

    Yes , HP sucks! They have the worst customer service, they refuse to honor their warrenty on computers still clearly under warrenty and their solution to all computer troubles or issues is to wipe it out and start fresh again. They refuse to look at your system to make a diagnosis and they basically just want you off the phone. Oh, another thing, don't bother asking for their managers, they dont have them. Not one person we spoke to including their QA dept. has a manager. Another crappy company who doesn't care about the consumers who bought their product.

    The long and short of this story is my 7 month old computer won't boot. It's in a loop. No safe mode, no any mode, it just wont boot. This all happened one lovely day in October 2005 when I decided to start my computer so that I could use it. Crazy, I know, hitting the "on" button can certainly stress out a machine, but I did it anyway. So it starts to boot and them "whamo" it freezes up. Huh, thats weird. So I do what most people do, I hit "ctrl,alt,delete" to get it to reboot. Yah, well that was the beginning and the end of it. It's now stuck in this loop that won't boot in any mode.
    We called HP Tech Support. We've spoken to 5 people now. All of them say just wipe it out. That's all the warrenty covers. Nobody wants to look at it to see if they can fix it without losing my data, that's way out of the question. They have no trouble with us taking it to one of their "authorized service centers" - Best Buy - and paying out the nose for them to look at it but they themselves at HP have no interest in the customer, service or holding up their warrenty. They happily offered us the option to buy a warrenty upgrade which we promply asked "Why in gods name would I pay anymore money to you people when you cant honor the warrenty we have now"???

    Here's something you guys will love too, the QA guy, Darren, said he didn't even own an HP, he built his own computer. What does that tell you? Their own employees don't buy their crap, So why should we??

    Another side note: eMachines has ranked higher in Customer Support in Consumers Reports than HP. eMachines??? Can you believe that?

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