Comments on this laptop

[hip]

I'm planning to get rid of my old laptop and get a new one: Fujitsu Siemens Amilo A1655G-21. Specs: AMD Turion 64 MT-32 1.6GHz, 1024 Mb DDR, 80Gb HD (don't know the speed), ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200, 15.4" TFT LCD WXGA. I'm expecting it'll work with my Tascam US-122.

 

I'd be really grateful for your comments.

[fisheye]

If you want to do any sampling, you have to know the speed of your HD before you buy. 7200RMP is recommended. Or hook up an external HD.

[ITGITC]

CLONK HERE FOR THE STORY

 

Great timing!

 

I would LOVE to have one of these 7200 RPM drives to replace the gerbils running on the wheel in my laptop. What is it, 78 RPM? Pushawwww!

 

Get one of these and eliminate one of the major bottlenecks of most laptops.

 

 

[midinut]

In upgrading my laptop recently (Dell Latitude C600) I could not find anything internal that was 7200rpm. Fastest was 5400rpm. Just my mileage ... yours may vary. If you find what I found to be true for yours, you might want to look into the possibilities of an external drive (FireWire or USB 2.0). With mine I'd need an adaptor (PCMCIA card) that would let mine use USB2 or FW. Just my thoughts for whatever they're worth.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is I'm NOT using mine for DAW tasks (I've got a biggerer desktop box for that). I'm only using mine with loaded VST's in an attempt (still working on ground hum issues) to play live with it, not record anything. I believe the CLONK that Tom gave you regarding hard drive speed is very relevent when using the laptop for recording purposes.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by midinut:

I'm only using mine with loaded VST's in an attempt (still working on ground hum issues)

What have you tried so far? Assuming you have tried the ideas we gave so far, you should tell us what transpired so we can see what else we can think of.

[JeffLearman]

It's the MOBO components and driver software that matter most. For laptops, about all you can do is try and see, or find out from someone who has the same unit.

 

The 7200 RPM vs. 5400 or even 4500 RPM issue is a red herring. The 4500RPM drive I had a few years back had a sustained transfer rate of 10MB/s, which is fast enough to transfer about 120 16/44k tracks, or over 32 24/96k tracks. The problem isn't with the spindle rate, it's with an engineering assumption that speed isn't important on a laptop.

 

Faster is better, no doubt about that. But mostly, better is better. A well-engineered 4500RPM drive should work just great, but I have heard from laptop owners who found they did get better results when they added an external drive. So, evidently there are poorly engineered drives in some laptops. (Big surprise!) This includes the I/O chipset and driver code, of course.

[midinut]

Originally posted by Byrdman:

Originally posted by midinut:

I'm only using mine with loaded VST's in an attempt (still working on ground hum issues)

What have you tried so far? Assuming you have tried the ideas we gave so far, you should tell us what transpired so we can see what else we can think of.

Not having the hum problem at home, rehearsal, and haven't played out again yet. We're playing at the same club it happened at last time on Thanksgiving. I have a DI with a ground lift this trip. I'll give you an update then.

 

Thanks for asking Byrdman!

[ITGITC]

Originally posted by learjeff:

The 7200 RPM vs. 5400 or even 4500 RPM issue is a red herring. The 4500RPM drive I had a few years back had a sustained transfer rate of 10MB/s, which is fast enough to transfer about 120 16/44k tracks, or over 32 24/96k tracks. The problem isn't with the spindle rate, it's with an engineering assumption that speed isn't important on a laptop.

 

Faster is better, no doubt about that. But mostly, better is better. A well-engineered 4500RPM drive should work just great, but I have heard from laptop owners who found they did get better results when they added an external drive. So, evidently there are poorly engineered drives in some laptops. (Big surprise!) This includes the I/O chipset and driver code, of course.

Vewwwwwwy interesting young Jeff of Lear.

 

However, I will soon put your point to the test as I plan to make a purchase of one of these 7200 RPM drives in the near future.

 

The summary from the article at Tom's Hardware Guide states:

 

Both of the two new 7,200 RPM hard drives are capable of delivering storage performance that helps to noticeably reduce the performance gap between desktops and notebooks. In fact, the data transfer performance that Hitachi is able to deliver is pretty impressive, while Seagate put its focus on maximizing I/O performance. From this point of view, the Seagate drive seems to be ideal for server use, while we would rather recommend Hitachi's new TravelStar 7K100 for high-performance notebooks. Yet both drives clearly outperform any other 2.5" ATA hard drive that is on the market today.

 

In another article dated 06JUN05, Tom's Hardware states: Increases in hard drive speed will undoubtedly continue in the notebook sector. The reason is simple: higher rotational speeds lead to boosts in performance, as data transfer rates and access times benefit equally. The only drawback is a slight negative impact on battery life.

 

They go on to say: The performance improvement between 5,400 and 7,200 RPM is not as great as that between 4,200 and 5,400 RPM. Most users will therefore be better served in the long term with a somewhat larger 5,400 RPM drive, rather than a smaller 7,200 RPM one. In addition, there's a whole 16 MB of cache on this unit, which is still unequalled among notebook drives.

 

 

So, LearJeff, I believe there is validity within your statements. I also can't help but believe that a faster internal hard disk drive will give my laptop a welcomed speed increase.

 

 

It's all good, and about to get better: ...in about 12 to 18 months, under Windows "Longhorn", hybrid hard drives will be able to stop the spinning platters dead in their tracks when idle, such as while surfing the Net, composing text or navigating a spreadsheet. Flash memory on the hard drive that takes over operation should make this work. This will also bring down a system's boot time enormously, because the time lost starting up the drive mechanism is prevented by an immediate readout of the flash memory.

 

Can ya dig it?

[JeffLearman]

Your facts are impeccable. They just don't have much to do with the data rates and access times demanded for DAW and PC sound module use.

 

7200 RPM is 33% faster than 5400, so all other things being equal (most importantly: bits per track), the max sustainable transfer rate of a 7200 drive is 33% higher than a 5400.

 

But with a 4200 RPM drive I had enough transfer rate to record 120 channels (10 MB/sec). Well, theoretically. Practically, the limit is considerably lower, but well above the dozen or two we might actually do. (Hmm, for disk streaming with 32 voices at 24/96, you do need a bit over 10MB/sec.)

 

My current external 7200 RPM drive reads at 30MB/sec, writes at about half that, according to dskbench (an interesting program though a little out of date as it assumes 16-bit tracks: http://www.sesa.es/en/dskbench.htm ).

 

OK, now let's think about access times: for an single access, there are two factors, track seek time, where typical values are 8 msec, and waiting for the sector. Only the latter depends on rotation speed. One rotation on a 4500 RPM drive takes 1/4500 sec (gee!) So the average additional time for sector seek is 1/9000 sec, or about 0.1 msec. Clearly, this only matters when multiple seeks are required to get at a bit of data.

 

So, while you might get a performance improvement with new gear, I suspect it's more due to better engineering than the spindle rate.

 

Note that applications that read and write lots of data and wait for it WILL perform better with better data and access speeds. Audio is the exception because the data gets transferred at a steady rate that is constant depending on the format and number of channels. So, if your drive is fast enough, the faster isn't better.

 

Anyway, that's the theory. BTW, I did write a disk driver once, though for floppy and not on PC, and it was long ago. It was for an automated teller machine. Unfortunately, I just couldn't figure out how to get it to transfer money into my account.

[ITGITC]

Jeff, you da man.

 

Thanks for your explanation.

 

[dnile]

Of course if you're really worried about disk bandwidth, just get one of these and connect it to your laptop - it even fits in your rack with the rest of your rack mount modules.

 

I just can't shake the feeling that it might be a bit of an overkill though

[JeffLearman]

Well, be aware that just because I convinced you does not mean I'm not full of sh*t.

 

Yeah, dnile, I want one of those in my rack, just to impress people!

 

dnile -- that's a state, isn't it?

[ITGITC]

Originally posted by learjeff:

Well, be aware that just because I convinced you does not mean I'm not full of sh*t.

 

Ummmm, you didn't convince me. I just want that beer that you promised me awhile back.

[JeffLearman]