Black Friday HP Laptop Performance?

I did some searching in this forum before posting, but didn't really find anything that answered my questions.

I'm very computer savy when it comes to desktops; I've built many, but as for notebooks, I'm not up to speed.

I'm a professional photographer and will be using my laptop tethered to my digital camera so I can show my clients photographs as they are taken (not in real time, but close to it) these files are about 20-72MB depending on format. I'll also be doing email, photoshop, web design, etc. on it.

I saw the announcement about WalMart's Black Friday sale and the HP ze2308wm notebook for $400. I was planning on buying that and then uping the ram to 1GB (for about $100) and maybe upgrading the HD (5400 or 7200) if needed.

My only question really is about the AMD 1.6ghz Spmpron processor in it.

Is it fast? I have no clue about mobile processors... I know it's not 'top of the line' but is there really going to be that much difference in that processor and a slower Pentium M that may be found in a cheaper Dell laptop?

I'm obviously being cheap here; I'm droping $20,000 on some new camera gear and do NOT have the funds or the desire to drop another $2,000 on a laptop when this one looks like it will be just fine with the RAM upgrade?

Am I right?!

Thanks so much!!

-Brad

 

The Sempron is AMD's budget processor so it wont have the performance of either the Turion or the Pentium M(533MHz). Saying that I do believe they are in the same performance range of the latest celeron m's and older Pentium M's(400MHz). The 2800+ might be in the same range as a 1.5/1.6GHz C-M/older P-M. I would say that it would be on par in some applications and slower in others(mostly those which need a lot of cache memory)

The author of the ze2000z review wrote a few comments regarding the performance of the processor...

Do remember that the reviewer had only 384MB RAM(128 taken away by the video) and a 4200rpm HDD which might have impacted performance.

 

The Sempron in that $400 notebook is pretty weak - fine for web surfing, and other general tasks, but if you can get something more powerful, I'd definitely go for it - it will last you longer. How much are your prepared to spend?

I suggest checking your local OfficeDepot - they sometimes have awesome weekend deals.

 

The Sempron is fine for most stuff. If you are going to be lugging this around and showing photos to clients, I would suggest something a little more durable and one that has a better screen. I don't think you need to spend $2000 to get something decent.

 

I was looking at samething and overall the biggest gripe I had with the walmart one was the 1gig max ram.

My question is very similar in performance about the sempron

Sempron 2800+ vs Celeron M 370. Assuming everything else is the same?

 

just get the acer one from microcenter

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=30489

 

Only if battery life is a non-issue. That thing only gets ~1 hour with its 4 cell battery.. Don't ask me why Acer didn't include a 6 cell battery like most laptops nowadays.

 

I've got a Sempron 3000+ (1.8Ghz) in my V2405, and it's a competent performer with everything I use it for (fairly casual tasks like word processing, casual gaming, playing DVD's, Internet browsing).

But I'm not familiar with it's performance while using Photoshop and doing web design. I'd think it would fall a bit short, but I can't say that with certainty. Even so, it should fine for the most part.

 

A side question here, suppose someone buys this laptop. Would s/he be able to upgrade the processor later? Maybe to a Turion64, or whatever AMD comes out next with? A rumor from another forum claims that the CPU is in a socket and not soldiered on to the motherboard.

It seems like with an additional 512 MB memory ($50), and a Turion64 ($160), you can get a pretty decent laptop for some $600 (albeit with poor graphics performance), if you can stand an HP laptop, and waiting in line at Walmart for a few hours.

 

The weak link in the perfromance chain on a laptop is the slow hard drive and not the CPU. I'd upgrade that first before doing the CPU as doing the CPU will void the warranty.

 

Yeah you can most probably upgrade to a Turion64, since basically the Sempron is a cut down version of the Turion. The ML series should work but not so sure of the MT series. The cpu is socketed, if you search through HP's website for the service manual for the ze2000z, you can see that they list the procedure required to remove/replace the processor.

About upgradability to future products cant say, since I believe that AMD will be moving to another socket next year to add support for DDR2 memory. So other than upgrading to the Turion ML or probably MT series might be the only option.

But as zazonz mentioned upgrading the HDD and memory might yield better results than just upgrading the cpu.