Do I need a new Desktop/Laptop or can I upgrade?

Norman-B

I have had my Desktop for 4 years now and I mainly use it for, visiting this site/Hotukdeals/my football club forum and loading photos of my family (100s of my grandson!) sending emails etc. I also watch BBC iplayer, now and again.

I recently bought a new Panasonic TZ7 camera and took video of my grandson ice skating. I had problems watching the video on my PC and contacted Panasonic CS (who were really helpful and spent loads of time with me). The end result was that they informed me that my PC was too slow to watch the video at 'normal' speed. I could watch it in slow motion due (I'm told) due to my PC's slow processor and insufficient memory.

My question is, should I buy a new Desktop/Laptop or can I upgrade? I'm really worried about going from XP to Windows 7 as I worry about what happens to all the photos/letters/emails I have on my HD. Will I be able to transfer all that to my new HD?

My PC is a Pentium 4 CPU 2.00GHz
1.90GHz 0.99 GB of Ram

Any advice welcomed!
Thanks for reading.

totalsolutions

> I worry about what happens to all the photos/letters/emails I have on my HD. Will I be able to transfer all that to my new HD?

Sounds like you need to backup your data to another drive and to DVD. Unless you have two backup copies, you have no backup.

Regarding the speed issue, you might need to do a clean install of Win XP. More ram would also help. A Pentium 4 should be fast enough.
A nice new drive plus Ram and clean install would be all you need. (Video card should cope OK).
Keep the original drive as (1) copy of your data/photos. Copy to new drive later, print out some of the best pictures. Use Crucial to find out what memory you need.

spakkker

A free prog like SIW or cpuz will tell you motherboard type so you can find out about upgrades .
Have you tried VLC media player?
How full is your h/d?
Ccleaner has an easy option in tools tab to stop progs running automatically at startup.
Cpu and mem should play video.

Norman-B

Many thanks for the reply!

I do have an external HD and back up daily. I never thought of backing up to DVD though. My HD is 80 gb, so I know I need to increase that. So, if I get a larger HD, more RAM and reinstall XP, I should be able to watch the Videos (I forgot to mention that the Video is in High Def). So my processor speed is good enough?

Thanks.

Norman-B

spakkker, never heard of VLC media player. Will that improve things?
I have 7 gb left on my HD (7 of 80)
I use CC cleaner but will look at your suggestion re startup.
The video does play on my PC but in 'slow motion'.

Thanks for the advice.
Below is a report from cpu z

Intel Pentium 4
Windows XP Professional SP3 (Build 2600)
CPU Arch : 1 CPU - 1 Cores - 1 Threads
CPU PSN : Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.00GHz
CPU EXT : MMX SSE SSE2
CPUID : F.2.4 / Extended : F.2
CPU Cache : L1 : 12 / 8 KB - L2 : 512 KB
Core : Northwood (0.130) / Stepping : B0
Freq : 1899.98 MHz (95 * 20)

MB Brand : Unknown
MB Model : P4i65G
NB : Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P rev A2
SB : Intel 82801EB (ICH5) rev 02

GPU Type : Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller
DirectX Version : 9.0c

RAM : 1024 MB DDR Dual Channel
RAM Speed : 126.7 MHz (3:4) @ 2.5-4-4-8
Slot 1 : 512MB (2700)
Slot 1 Manufacturer : Noname
Slot 2 : 512MB (2700)
Slot 2 Manufacturer : Noname

BillScarab

Unfortunately you may well need a new computer.

The TZ7 records in the AVCHD Lite format which is 720p. It does place a heavy demand on the computer.

Most people seemt o be recommending a dual core processor at least and a Graphics card that has hardware support for H.264.

What graphics card do you currently have?

I'm going to be finding out all about this after Christmas as I'm getting a Panasonic SD10 camcorder that records in AVCHD 1080p.

EDIT: Forgot to say try all the other suggestions first, no point spending anything you don't need to. It may also be worth doing some googling to see if there may be a codec problem.

Norman-B

Bill, thanks for your post. I have no idea what graphics card I have. How do I find out?

Panny CS did say that I would need Dual Core.
Codec problem? Whats that? (Sorry, I'm a little 'behind the times' with PC knowledge. I tend to ask my 11 year old grandson about things to do with computers!!)

BillScarab

Codec = Coder decoder

It's bit of code that Media Player or VLC, for example, use s to decode the video stream so your computer cna play it. If you don't have the right one the video will either not play back or may have strange colours or poor playback.

To be honest I suspect it is not a codec issue however.

If you download and run cpu-z it should tell you the graphics card details.

robredz

Here is a link to an article published in 2006, giving implied minimum specs for full HD playback, however, 720p isn't as heavy:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=19&id=2108&pg=2

You should be looking at a new PC in the near future imho.

spakkker

I think avchd is the problem - http://paulstamatiou.com/why-im-avoiding-avchd
Your onboard graphics gpu is poor ,I guess this is your m/b - http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P4I65G - not worth upgrading really. If you can transfer some video to your h/d and then try playing it may well look better , but you will have to clear a load off your h/d say 20~30 gig.

Donnie

You could try purchasing a new graphics card.

The ZOTAC GeForce 6200A or the PNY 6200 512MB will improve the performance until you can afford a new machine.