Slow Laptop?

Hi, people.
My main machine is running n-T beautifuly - like an old sewing machine in a barrel of oil.

It would be cool if I could get it to run on my old craptop. I need a new one, but it’ll have to wait until I’ve paid off my new power-kite, Van Gough and hospital wing;-)

Any tips on speeding-up the old tool would be usefull. I lowered the colour to 16bit which helped a lot. But?

Cheers.

Quote: (TonyR @ Apr. 30 2009, 2:43 PM)

Hi, people.
My main machine is running n-T beautifuly - like an old sewing machine in a barrel of oil.

It would be cool if I could get it to run on my old craptop. I need a new one, but it'll have to wait until I've paid off my new power-kite, Van Gough and hospital wing;-)

Any tips on speeding-up the old tool would be usefull. I lowered the colour to 16bit which helped a lot. But?

Cheers.

Specs please... brandname and model would be a good start. Give us a link to the model's specs if it has one (i.e. a webpage at the manufacturer's site).

Yes, 16 bpp color is good. Sometimes it's possible to upgrade the CPU on a laptop just a little bit in speed, though it can take ~40 screws (kinky!) to get to the motherboard level though, I would know, heh. Or upgrade the harddrive to a better RPM. Or add a PCMCIA soundcard (or PCMCIA USB 2.0 if you only have USB 1.1) or what not. But that's pretty much it in the hardware dept. The rest, as you have hinted, is in the software/OS/BIOS. A fresh reinstallation of the operating system helps too.

Hi, Techie. compaq Evo N1020v.

How much RAM you got in her? First place I look for speed is RAM

I found the specs here:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11455_na/11455_na.html

First off, which exact model do you have? Look under “Naming Convention” on that page, because you may have a Celeron or Pentium4 model.

As Poppa said, memory makes a big difference. Looks like these laptops come initially with 256MB (DDR). Per the spec list, you can upgrade up to 1.0 GB memory. You are stuck with DDR (not DDR2/DDR3), but it’s better than older memory speeds (PC133, etc).

USB seems to be only version 1.1, but hard to say without more research. If you use USB external drives and file transfer seems zippy, you may have USB 2.0. I say this because you might want to get into USB audio/MIDI recording on your Evo. Firewire (IEEE1394) is a good alternative, since the laptop has it too. You’ll just need to test it for consistent audio streaming.

For the hard drive, considering upgrading to a bigger drive capacity at a higher RPM, say like 7200 rpm. It may have come with a 4200rpm drive. Maximum drive transfer is listed to be ATA-5, so you’re stuck with PATA/IDE not SATA, which isn’t necessarily bad. You can find this in the BIOS and in Windows Device Manager. Look for hard disk controller and see if you’re really running at UDMA speeds, not PIO. Also find out if it is capable of bigger drives (i.e. 48bit LBA capacity), otherwise you’re stuck using <137GB drives. Of course, trying to get to the hard drive might be an issue.

And Always run your laptop off mains electricity, not battery, to ensure maximum power efficiency. I’m sure you already do that.

Last but not least, update your laptops proprietary drivers and BIOS from Compaq/HP as latest as possible, if any (I didn’t check), if you haven’t already. Be careful with BIOS upgrading though! That can render a craptop braindead if the upgrade isn’t done correctly, but don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing.

I’m sure I may have forgotten something, but this should be a good start. And again, a fresh O/S installation is good. If it has an XP restore disc, use that rather than a retail XP disc. If you’re going to try music recording/editing on it, delete all unnecessary stuff (bloatware, etc). :)

Does it have a PCMCIA (cardbus) slot?
If it does, it makes usability far more likely.
On a laptop, I’d suggest staying with USB2 or if you can find one a ECHO Layla 24 with a PCMCIA card is a great choice.
Mine works great with a Pin. 3 laptop and only 256 gig of memory -
although I had best say that was with earlier versions of XP and N-track.
If you only need a couple of inputs, most folks have good luck with Tascan USB 122.

To speed the machine up (and get better audio), turn off everything that you can, LAN and modum for sure.
Fihnd and kill any programs that insist on loading to memory on computer start up.
Where possible, turn them off in the bios.
Do NOt run a virus program on the computer, it will slow you down for sure.
I have had good luck with the slower 5400 hd in laptops, but a USB 7600 rpm will help if you use it to record the audio and the laptops internal drive for windows.
Firewire in laptops is a crap shoot, even with the TI chips that are recomended, if you want to try yours, get permission to return the recording unit because they are much more problems and are not really that much better for most things - I have a MOTU firewire I run from a PCMCIA TI chipset and it works well with my pen 4 Duo core laptop.
But that is only with the latest drivers and thye have other problems.
Bax

Wow!!! You guys are amazing. Thank you.

I’ll up the RAM and cut away any hungry
mouths.

I’m not looking to replace or emulate
my main machine. But it would be cool
to escape to the bathroom or anywhere
that sounds good, with some curious
musical instrument, and then squirt
it into the main for tweaking.

Quote: (TonyR @ May 01 2009, 1:15 PM)

But it would be cool
to escape to the bathroom ... and then squirt
it into the main for tweaking.

Ewwwww...

Where’d I post that squirt.wav ?

http://www.eventsounds.com/dumbanddumber.htm

Into the main, Pop;-)

Seriously. This is the slowest machine I have
ever met? But! the more I chop off - the more
stable n-T becomes.

Shopping list. RAM.

Nicely, Phoo :laugh:

I just searched for squirt.wav and that was the first link that came up. For some reason I doubt that’s the sound Poppa was looking for…then again…you never know.
:)

Oh-oh! Shall I leave you two alone? :laugh:

Should I be glad my phone won’t play wavs?

ahhhh… a man and a search engine. Mahvelous…