Confederate

The company I work for routinely cleans out it's old computer hardware every few years, and 2005 was the year they did it.
There were three laptops that were deemed unfit for work for various reasons, and since the Network guys can just budget in new laptops in favor of fixing the old ones they gave them away.
One laptop had a broken monitor, 2 of them had bad hard drives, 1 had a bad battery, one wouldn't boot up, etc.
I asked nicely to have all three laptops, and took them all home and before the end of the evening I had cannibalized myself a working laptop, some parts came from the laptops, and some I had laying around.

Here are the specs off the top of my head.
Dell Latitude CPi-A
PII-400 MHz
256 Mb Ram
~10 gig 4200 RPM HD
~2.5 Mb Integrated Video Card
Win2k Pro
24x CDROM
and 2 Batteries.
Linksys Wireless-G PC Card
and a Linksys Wireless-G access point.

I plan on using this to help with my studies in college, browse the internet, listen to music, and upload my digital camera photos to when my card gets full and I am away from home, and sometimes as a mobile charger for my iPod.

Since the video card is so small videos are next to impossible to watch, except for small-low-quality ones.

So far it has been working great.
Few questions though. Would a laptop this old benefit from a higher RPM larger capactiy HD?
And is there any way to improve the movie playing abilities of the Laptop?

cyrnel

Bargains are good!

For video, copy the file(s) to the HD. Set the screen resolution to 640x480 or 800x600, and 16bit color. Of course, before playing make sure nothing is chewing up too many cpu cycles.

As for the HD, anything helps to a degree but it won't be dramatic. Too many bottlenecks on a system that old. If you find a cheap 5400 handmedown, sure, but a 7200 rpm drive is worth about the same as that computer.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

MikeSty

Better hard-drive = YES! Precisely what Cyrnel said would be my diagnosis.

Congratulations on your work. I myself have three broken laptops, none of which work. Quite a miserable story.

Confederate

Awesome, lowering the resolution worked wonders, now if i can get good quality movies to play as well, I might be more tempted to get a larger HD.

Confederate

How much would switching to a higher RPM (4200 to 5400) drive improve performance?

flat5

5400/4200 percent ?

cyrnel

I didn't want to give confederate false hopes. That system has bridge, memory, and cpu bottlenecks that'll nullify most of any HD improvements. Seek improvements are always nice, but I bet the transfer rate is already throttled by other system components.

Confederate, if the old drive is fragmented any new drive might appear quite a bit faster, at first. Download the perfectdisk eval and see what it thinks.

Look for a 5400RPM handmedown. It might help a bit but don't expect wonders. Definitely don't bother buying a 7200RPM drive unless you plan on moving it to a newer laptop later.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Confederate

yea I saw your earlier post and I know I'm not looking for a miracle. And I know there is no way I'm paying for a 7200RPM, that's why I said from 4200 to 5400 RPM. I'm just trying to get an idea before I spend ~60 bucks for a 40 Gig HD. Because if it's at least noticable I'll get it sooner, if it's not noticable, then I'll just wait till I have a few extra bucks to throw around.

nukeu666

i hope you arnt using win xp on a system that old
either win 98 or custom debian system would increase performance quite a bit

and your could attach an external hdd if it has usb ports

__________________
Why did the Comp. Engineer get X-mas and Halloween mixed up?
Because Oct(31) == Dec(25)

Confederate

I'm running Win2k Pro on it right now, it runs just fine.
I'm running XP Pro on a PIII-500 machine with 256mb RAM, and it runs pretty damn well too.

Granted I only use these 2 for web browsing and school work and they run great for what I use them for. I have another machine that I game with as well as other random power hungry stuff.