Laptop...any good?

[PiNG]

Hi

Just wondering if anyone could give me some feed back on how good the laptop (below) would be for video etc. Transfering DV through firewire etc..

Any comments welcome... Thanks

Intel Pentium-M Centrino 1.7GHz processor
400MHz Front Side Bus
1024KB integrated level 2 cache
1GIGMB 333MHz RAM
Versatile DVD SuperMultiWriter (can use DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM discs)
DVD Writer / CD Writer / DVD ROM AND CD-ROM Combo Drive
15.4" widescreen Active TFT colour screen
Brilliant CSV deep contrast Wide Angle display
1280x800 display resolution
nVidia GeForceFX Go5200 3D graphics card - DirectX 9
32MB dedicated DDR VRAM
Integrated AGP
80GB hard disk drive
IEEE1394 (i-Link, Firewire) port
54MBps Wi-Fi wireless LAN 802.11b/g
Harmon Kardon speakers
Microphone
AC'97 sound processor
3 x high speed USB 2.0 ports
SD card slot - for SD camera cards
Infrared port 4Mbps
Optional Bluetooth - requires optional SD Card
S-Video (TV) port
SVGA (data projector or monitor) port
2 x memory expansion slots (two filled)
10/100 network
56k fax / modem
TouchPad pointing device
Parallel printer port
World-wide auto-sensing AC adapter
Lithium ion battery (3.5 hours)

[Capmaster]

Nice machine. You have more than enough horsepower there, and as long as you don't archive too many videos, the 80GB crive ought to be enough.

There's just one drawback with all the laptops I've seen: HD speed. They are never up to desktop standards. They make performance tradeoffs to get them so small. While I don't think you'll ever have real problems, encoding might take a while. Almost all video tasks are HD-intensive.

[anzimike]

Yeah, nice machine. I fully agree with capmaster regarding the hd. One possible way to speed encoding or shrinking is to add 1 or 2 firewire or usb 2 external hd's. Encode from one drive to another for maximum speed. This is what I did to speed things up on my older p3 850 laptop. Enjoy!

[Capmaster]

Yeah, nice machine. I fully agree with capmaster regarding the hd. One possible way to speed encoding or shrinking is to add 1 or 2 firewire or usb 2 external hd's. Encode from one drive to another for maximum speed. This is what I did to speed things up on my older p3 850 laptop. Enjoy!

Agreed. As long as you have firewire and USB2 you might as well use that for outboard storage.

[Thomas Davie]

I have a laptop with the following specs;

Athlon 2500+
512 mb ram
40 gb 4200 rpm hard drive
64 mb radeon shared video
3 USB 2.0/1 firewire
54g wireless.

I ended up buying an external 160 gb maxtor which moves back and forth between my laptop and desktop, and also a USB 2.0 8x DVD +/- R/RW. Without the external hard drive and/or writer, it would take me 1 hour to DVDShrink 28 days later. With the external drives, it's down to 16 minutes.

I did leave the laptop encoding 13 epsiodes of Survivors (the Bristisg post apocalytpic series and not the crap reality series) in Auto Gordian Knot, and it handlded it like a charm.

I say go for it. I rip, shrink, edit, and encode on my laptop.

Tom

[PiNG]

Thanks everyone for your replys...

Just a quick question on backing up the dvds with this laptop...any suggestions for a good prgram that works well on laptops?

Thanks!

[Capmaster]

Thanks everyone for your replys...

Just a quick question on backing up the dvds with this laptop...any suggestions for a good prgram that works well on laptops?

Thanks!

For backing up DVDs on any machine, a popular app here is DVDShrink. Hard to beat it