Is this a recommended configuration for W3V?

Intel pentium M 2GHz
2GB RAM
100GB 7200rpm

Will the system run too hot? And how much battery life will I probably get.

 

Hot? Probably warm on the right palmrest...but not hot.

I'm guessing ~4 hours of battery life...plus or minus 15 mins, and depending on usage.

 

probably less battery life... I would say more like 3 hours :S...thats one heck of a configuration though.

 

I would definitely go with much less battery life, like 3 hours WITH undervolting, considering that w3v's with 5400 rpm and a 1.86ghz, as well as a 512MB RAM are lucky to get up to 4 hrs.

As far as the config being "recommended", its definitely diminishing returns in terms of performance/cost ratio. 2 gig RAM is overkill, even for the most intensive programs. However, that setup will be noticeable faster than a stock w3v, if that's what you're looking for= ). It'll also be hotter than a normal w3v. Personally, I don't have a problem with the heat in mine (1.86ghz, 1.5gig ram, 5400 rpm), I can comfortably put it on my lap, and the heat vent is fine.

 

Yeah...but like I said, it depends on usage.

You can run a 2.16GHz CPU and a 1.5 GHz CPU and squeeze identical battery life out of it if you throttle the CPU to run at 800 MHz.

 

I have 1.86GHz, 1MB, 5400rpm, undervolted with CHC, and I consistently get 4:15 on battery. The 7200rpm will suck more juice, but the extra meg of RAM will slightly compensate for that (although I agree it does sound like overkill), and if your CPU runs at minimum step most of the time (which mine almost always does, except when opening programs, downloading huge files, etc), I'd bet you can still squeeze close to 4 hours out of the battery as long as you're not accessing the HD all the time. The HD is what's really gonna suck your power, that and the screen backlight.

 

....impressive....

 

Gig, I meant GB!

My keyboard must be screwy -- I'm certain I typed GB, but somehow it wrote MB. I swear, it wasn't me....

Actually, I'm old enough that my first computer did have 1MB RAM -- and that was considered a lot at the time (back when 640K was typical)!

 

I've got the same config as the original poster, except half the ram. The CPU averages about 45C basically idle with an ambient temp of about 21C. After about 2 hours of video transcoding, the CPU is about 50C, but the fan cranked up during the transcoding, and the CPU temp goes back down readily as well. The disk is warm at the right palm rest, but just mildly so. Notebook hardware control shows the disk sweating around 45-48C (I don't know why there isn't a vent right at the disk drive tray...). My readings are a bit limited as notebook hardware control likes to lock up on me, and I don't yet have much statistics.

One strange thing is the fan rates and thresholds are completely different under linux than windows. Anybody know why?