New laptop for me

[MikeyBK]

What do, you guys thing of this one and the price?
Looking for some feedback as to whether it was a decent deal or not??

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=5238478

I can always get another DVD burner if I'd like to go to 16X
<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Especially interested in what you got to say Chewy...

[Chewy]

looks like a sweet deal, cpu and ram especially, doubt that it's got much of a dvd burner, but you could always pair it with a custom built firewire enclosure and a real dvd burner.
it would be challenging to optimize and streamline

hard to imagine them packing all that power into such a small package

add 100$ for the 3 year warranty tho

[MikeyBK]

Thanks for the feedback Chewy.
Yeah the cpu and ram looked great, I'm hoping it runs lightning quick.

I also have that same concern about so much in such a confined space, hope it doesn't overheat easily.

Thanks again for your input.

[PurpleDemon]

Wow !!!!

If you do get it would be great to hear some feedback on how fast it really is. Looks sweet.




We are shopping around for a new laptop as well.

Thanks

[MikeyBK]

Sorry for not getting back with some feedback, had a bit of a shipping issue with them. Got it now and it's blazing fast surfing the net. Doesn't slow any with several things running at once.
Came with a Sony DW-G520A burner and it runs great. Fab ripped a movie only in about 8 mins (4 GBs) and Shrink w/AnyDVD did it in just ovr 8 1/2 minutes.

Working great, I'm glad I got this one.

Only downside is that it didn't come with WinDVD, which I like best for DVd layback. But I got Media Player and Nero Showtime, so I'll be alright...

[Chewy]

how fast to do a 60 or 70% compression with shrink, da and aec enabled?

[MikeyBK]

how fast to do a 60 or 70% compression with shrink, da and aec enabled?

I'll try it out as soon as I play around with a few more things.

From the disc straight or from the harddrive after FAB or RI4M?

[MikeyBK]

Well I tried what you were asking Chewy and I found out a couple of interesting things.

First I picked an older movie that doesn't have as much crap encryption on it but was exactly 60% compression. And I used DVDFab to rip to the harddrive and then used Shrink in DA and encoded with both my laptop and my desktop for comparison.

First on my laptop (AMD Turion X2 DualCore 1.61 GHz, w/ 2Gigs Ram) DVDFab took 22 minutes to rip the entire 7.59 GBs to the harddrive. And then it took DVD Shrink another 23 minutes to DA and encode.

Then on my desktop (AMD Athlon SingleCore 2.2 GHz, w/ 1Gig Ram) Fab took only 13 minutes to rip the same disc in full to the harddrive. But it took nearly the same 23 minutes for DVD Shrink to DA and encode on the desktop.

Interesting results Huh?? What do you make of it Chewy?? Curious how the laptop kept up with the desktop on the movie-only rip before.??

I'm guessing that the Desktop ripped faster than the Laptop because although not being a dual-core, it was 2.2 GHz while the laptop is only 1.6 GHz even if it is DualCore...
And that the laptop kept up with the desktop on the DA and encoding because of having 2 Gigs Ram to the desktops 1 Gig..?? I'm guessing.

Anyways, was interesting and fun test it out, but I won't really be doing that much of the DVD work on the laptop. It will be mostly for my job and for surfing the net..

[Chewy]

It's all about limiting factors(bottlenecks)

in the rip the limiting factor is the reading drive

for the compression(make sure shrink has no analysis files stored), it was the hard drives that kept the desktop in the ball game

[MikeyBK]

in the rip the limiting factor is the reading drive

That sounds like a valid point there. Even when I used the laptop's DVD-RW to burn a disc, it very 'slowly' built up to speed, long lead-in time.
Another interesting thing is that the laptops drive is a Sony DW-G520A, In a HP??
Haven't looked at the drives casing to see who actually manufactured it but thought that was interesting. That drive I've since read mostly comes in a Vaio.
I also used a Sony drive on the desktop for the comparison tests, (Sony DRU-810 = Rebadged BenQ 1640)

[Chewy]

hard drives and optical drives in laptops are inherently lamer than their desktop counterparts

cpu and memory less so

[MikeyBK]

hard drives and optical drives in laptops are inherently lamer than their desktop counterparts

cpu and memory less so

Yeah I kinda figured as much. Heat in such a confined space also doesn't help right?

But all in all I'm pretty satisfied with it,

Thanks for the feedback Chewy.

[locoeng]

Looks like a nice rig Mikey..I love my laptop, it goes everywhere with me. Stopped ripping and burning DVD's on it though because I'm too impatient and mine isn't able to booktype.