XP Speed....

[Smith]

I'm getting a cheap laptop for internet/e-mail and typing some papers up for
school. How well does a Celeron 1.3 with 256mb of ram run XP? Is it
horribly slow or would it handle okay for what I need? I know they
recommend 512mb with XP, but then I've heard of people running XP on old
PII's and PIII's with 256 to 384mb of ram. Thanks.

 

[Alias]

I'm getting a cheap laptop for internet/e-mail and typing some papers up
for school. How well does a Celeron 1.3 with 256mb of ram run XP? Is it
horribly slow or would it handle okay for what I need? I know they
recommend 512mb with XP, but then I've heard of people running XP on old
PII's and PIII's with 256 to 384mb of ram. Thanks.

You want at least 384. 256 is pretty slow.

Alias

 

[Smith]

I just looked up the memory, $35 for a 256mb stick, I can do that. I
thought it would be $100+ a stick like my old laptop sdram was, I'm happy
now, good ddr.

Thanks.

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Good choice!

With slower, older processors like the Celeron, the more memory the better.

Have you looked at any of the Sempron based notebooks? The Sempron is a
much better chip than the Celeron, and is often cheaper.

Bobby

 

[Alias]

What's the difference betwen Sempron and Athlon XP?

Alias

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Should be fine, just avoid using the eye candy, running with classic versus
xp-style will help conserve cpu time slices and memory space. I run a 2Gz
celeron chip on an older laptop with 512MB ram as a workhorse and though a
bit slower than my desktops, it serves the purpose well.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Leythos]

I'm getting a cheap laptop for internet/e-mail and typing some papers up for
school. How well does a Celeron 1.3 with 256mb of ram run XP? Is it
horribly slow or would it handle okay for what I need? I know they
recommend 512mb with XP, but then I've heard of people running XP on old
PII's and PIII's with 256 to 384mb of ram. Thanks.

It would be very slow, get at least 512MB RAM. I've seen dozens of
people that bought Celeron 1.7 and slower that wish they had bought
faster.

If you really want a screamer, but not good on battery power, get a full
P4 CPU with hyper threading.

A P3/933 with 512MB RAM would almost be as fast as a Celeron 1.3ghz
machine like you describe.

 

[Smith]

I just need this for school papers and e-mail though...nothing terribly
strenuous. My PII 400 desktop with 98SE does it perfect, I just need a
laptop for it now. I think a Celeron M 1.3 with 512mb would work. If the
slowness of XP pisses me off to much I'll just wipe it and put 98SE on it.

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Smith]

I checked out HP's site, they have a $550 model with an AMD Sempron 2800+.
But to make that as good as the other one I picked out I would have to add
$100 worth of features and $69 shipping. For what I want I just don't think
the speed increase would be worth it. Thanks though for suggesting it.

 

[Alias]

That will be plenty fast for your needs even with all the eye candy that XP
has. I had a 1.3 celeron with XP and it worked wonderfully.

Alias

I just need this for school papers and e-mail though...nothing terribly
strenuous. My PII 400 desktop with 98SE does it perfect, I just need a
laptop for it now. I think a Celeron M 1.3 with 512mb would work. If the
slowness of XP pisses me off to much I'll just wipe it and put 98SE on it.

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Good choice!

With slower, older processors like the Celeron, the more memory
the
better.

How much memory you need has nothing to do with how old or slow
the processor is. If memory helps you, it helps you regardless of
the processor.

Also the statement "the more memory the better" is true only up
to a point. Once you have enought memory to stop you from using
the page file (for most people running a mix of common business
applications, that's somewhere in the 256-512MB range), more
memory does almost nothing for you, and is a waste of money.