Laptop question re minimum specs needed for

gonzo127

i would personally think about just replacing your current desk top, since you have got all the extra bits like mouse keyboard and monitor you will just have to update the main unit which will give you much better system than getting a laptop (mainly because on the laptop a large part of the cost is the screen)

Norman-B

Gonzo, thanks for your input.

macman

You don't need any assistance to back up. Just copy your files over as you would to any other drive. Once they are on the external drive, open them to make sure they are all there and then you can delete the originals. But for security you should also have a back up elsewhere, maybe on DVD.
That 34GB is clogging up most of your hard drive's capacity.
Once that is cleared, you can defrag properly.
Memory: you appear to have 1GB of RAM at present, made up of 2 x 512MB chips. No free slots. Cheapest upgrade option is to buy 1x1GB and swap out one existing chip. that will give you 1.5GB-50% more. Or to get the maximum, buy 2 x 1GB and swap both out.
Really depends what spec your video processing software requires-what software and version are you using? And do you already have a Firewire port to import from your HD camera?
If not a PCI Firewire card would be about this much:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125607

Donnie

Norman-B wrote: »

Many thanks for that useful advice. So, am I correct in thinking that if I increase the Ram to 2GB, I could use my desktop for video editing? Is my processor capable?

I bought an external HD some weeks ago but as yet, have not used it. Reason being that I'm fearful of moving my 34GB of photos off my HD and for some reason making a ba**s up! I was surprised that the external HD did not come with a disk to assist with backing up.

Thanks again for your help!

Crucial scan,

• Maximum Memory Capacity: 2048MB
• Currently Installed Memory: 1GB
• Available Memory Slots: 0
• Total Memory Slots: 2
• Dual Channel Support: Yes
• CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
• CPU Family: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz Model 2, Stepping 4
• CPU Speed: 1900 MHz
• Although the memory can be installed one module at a time, the best performance comes from using matched pairs of modules.

Quoted £65.78 for 2 x 1GB

I would upgrade the PC and get the new laptop, as your Grandson will clearly be hogging the new laptop. You can do both within your budget.

Don't worry about losing your data. When you COPY your data over, the originals are still left on your PC hard drive. If all of your pictures are in the Pictures folder, just Copy & Paste the folder to the external hard drive. It's very easy, but make sure that you have formatted the new external drive to NTFS beforehand.

Forget about Crucial, download and Run; CPU-Z. Running the program will tell you exactly what you have inside and not just what Crucial wants to sell to you.

Report the results under SPV/Memory. Ideally let us know what machine you are using or go to the Advanced tab of the program and produce an HTML Dump. You can upload it somewhere so that we can download and view it, in order to determine which upgrades can be made or you can take a screenshot and post it here.

macman

Why 'forget about Crucial'? The Crucial scanner does a perfectly good job of telling you what is installed and what is available as an upgrade. Whether the OP buys the memory from Crucial or another source is another matter.
It's quite clear from post 11 that the OP has 1GB of RAM, consisting of 2 x 512MB chip, and 2 slots in total. So the only upgrade options are either 1 or 2 x 1GB.
What is not yet clear is whether a RAM upgrade might be enough to run the video processing tasks adequately.

Donnie

macman wrote: »

Why 'forget about Crucial'? The Crucial scanner does a perfectly good job of telling you what is installed and what is available as an upgrade. Whether the OP buys the memory from Crucial or another source is another matter.
It's quite clear from post 11 that the OP has 1GB of RAM, consisting of 2 x 512MB chip, and 2 slots in total. So the only upgrade options are either 1 or 2 x 1GB.
What is not yet clear is whether a RAM upgrade might be enough to run the video processing tasks adequately.

Crucial doesn't tell you what's installed. So if PC2100 is installed and they only stock PC2700, guess what will be recommended? Plus, it's sometimes wrong.

In addition, if I have the Motherboard details, I can recommend a suitable graphics card, which should improve the video performance.

01001011

Norman-B wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

Problem with my desktop is that it took ages and ages to transfer a 15 minute video. I now have a camera with HD Video and I can't play back on my desktop (playback is in a stuttering motion). When I contact the camera mfr, they told me the specs of my desktop were too out of date for playing HD video. So laptop it is.
Is a 15" screen too small?

What program are you using to play the HD movies?

macman

And what method are you using to do the the transfer? A Firewire PCI card should sort out that side of things.

Donnie

In fact, in this case I would spend the money on a Graphics Card and not more RAM, especially if there is a fixed budget for the upgrade.
A possible candidate would be this Asus HD 3450.
Those of course I would need the Motherboard/Chipset details to confirm...

pendulum

Your not actually doing much true video editing are you? Your problem is as you say stuttering playback of HD movies. I would forget about the RAM upgrade as 1Gb for XP is more than enough to play back HD movies. Just add a capable video card to replace the onboard graphics, as that is the bottleneck at the moment. You can't expect good quality HD playback by just using a lousy onboard video. Do download CPU-Z, and click on the Mainboard tab and see what graphics interface you have, I am guessing it will be AGP, you can get a cheap AGP card on eBay for under a tenner that should improve playback alot, its worth a shot.