HP ZV5000Z vs Compaq R3000Z

Thanks in advance for your help. This is a great site with very informative forums!

I'm trying to decide between the HP and Compaq. At face value these appear to be the same machine with different appearance. What are the differences performance/age/technology wise? Other than the HP having better speakers is it just personal preference?

I'm not a gamer, but will do some photo editing and potentially some digital video editing. I'll surf of course and run the office professional suite, as well as listen to and burn music.

I'm big on wireless and battery life and heat generation are of some importance. I am not very familiar with AMD products, but this forum seems to support them. If this machine was offered with Pentium M, I'd be all over it.

Will HP be offering this machine with Sonoma?

 

AMDs are fast processors, but you are never going to get good battery life out them since they are slightly less power hungry versions of the desktop CPU. Same for the Pentium 4. AMD is suppossed to be coming out with the Turion, a Pentium M challenger, but it is not here yet. If you want good battery life, a Pentium M is a must. Although the clock speed is lower, Pentium Ms have larger caches on the CPU which gives better performance than the clock speed indicates. HP will definetly be coming out with Sonomas, but I doubt this machine will host one since it is an AMD Machine. If you are looking for a bargain machine, I'd look at the Acer TravelMate 4000. Its got the Pentium M for good battery life. Plus Acer builds a fairly decent machine.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=154302&_LOC=US

When you do start to do the video editing you are going to want to upgrade the hard drive to a 7200Rpm drive. Video editing is a hard drive intensive app. The 4200Rpm standard drive will be very slow.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100519&affiliate=pricegrabber

Good Luck.






I know things, things that could get me killed

 

It depends on your definition of "good battery life". A zv5000z/R3000z with the 12-cell battery gets 3-4 hours of battery life, far better than its P4 equivalent. A Pentium-M will do better on battery life and system weight but it lacks 64-bit capability and Enhanced Virus Protection, plus you're paying the Intel marketing tax.

P4's have no business being in notebooks, but people are often forced to buy one to get a decent video chip in their favorite notebook brand. There's no technical reason for this, it's just marketeers in serious need of a clue.