I'm strongly conidering the HP ELITEBOOK 2530p but a couple questions.

I'm only thinking of getting the 1.6 GHz here at this site.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/de...e 2 Duo SL9300 1.6 GHz - 12.1" TFT_1552690#TS

While it's not like the 1.86 GHz model like on the NBR review, I like how it still is 6MB and L2 cache. I've never had much experience with all the technical specifications of notebooks, but the 1.6 GHz configuration would suffice for MS Office work and web surfing while signed into MSN Live messenger and Skype?

What DOES a notebook with higher GHz mean compared to a notebook that has higher MB and cache? For example, compare this notebook to a Dell notebook with 2.26 GHz and 3MB and L2 cache. What's the difference between the 2 in terms of performance?

Thanks.

 

Wow, you've asked quite a loaded question there. The answer is quite complicated. MHz tells you what the CPU uses as a clock reference. The CPU can do a certain number of operations per clock cycle; consequently, when examining two identical CPUs which differ only by clock rate, there is a linear correlation between MHz and performance*.

I put the asterisk there b/c in reality, there are a lot of qualifiers which we must look at:

1. the CPUs must be identical except for the clock rate. The 1.6 GHz processor is a Core 2 Duo Low Voltage chip, which means that it probably does less per clock cycle than other chips. I believe the 2.26 GHz chips are from a more performance oriented family; consequently, there is a greater performance difference between the two chips than what their clock rates would dictate.

2. The linear correlation in performance also assumes that RAM and disk are not used in the performance tests, only the CPU and its internal cache. Consequently, the linear correlation in performance would be seen if we were running a test like calculating PI or some other CPU-intensive task.

3. RAM and disk are pretty slow in the eyes of the CPU, and can play a massive part in overall system performance. To quote from an example at http://pix.cs.olemiss.edu/csci423/latency (thanks, Google!), if we slowed down a modern computer's components to humanly understandable timescale (the CPU clock ticking once per second), then accessing cache would take approximately 3 seconds; accessing RAM would take one minutes, and accessing disk would take 77 days! It doesn't help to have a really fast CPU without cache; the CPU would constantly need to go back to RAM, and would be vapor-locked in the meantime. Even worse, if you had a tiny amount of RAM and no cache, large programs would constantly run out of RAM and go back to disk, which would leave your fast CPU twiddling its thumbs for most of the time.

You may either be fascinated by all of the above information, or may just want a short answer. Here's the short answer:

* MS Office is a RAM hog, but not incredibly CPU intensive compared to gaming, software development, scientific computing etc. More RAM and a fast disk is probably more important than the CPUs that you've mentioned. The 2530p you're looking at has 2 GB of RAM, which is probably sufficient for XP. If you upgrade to Vista, probably bump up your RAM to 3-4 GB. (Don't even get me started on 32 bit OSes and 4GB addressing limitations)

* I take it that Live messenger is being used for text messaging. Yeah, another program which has minimal CPU impact (unless you're using video messaging)

* I have not personally used Skype, but people on the web report it running fine on a Netbook w/a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor. Although the Atom is a 1.6 GHz processor, it is a lot less capable than the LV Core 2 Duo on the 2530p; consequently, I am guessing that you'll probably be ok with the 2530p. Again, I also take it that you're talking about voice calls, not video calls (which stress graphics processor performance and would benefit from a discrete graphics card rather than the integrated graphics card in the 2530p).

* The main problem could be with all the other programs that could be running the laptop. Personally, I like to run "lean and mean", with very little running on the machine except for the task on hand. If you like surfing web sites which have heavy flash, video, multimedia, and if you're running a whole bunch of widgets in the background, then RAM starvation will start happening (and the integrated graphics subsystem on the 2530p will start getting taxed), memory will get swapped to disk (remember the 77 day figure above), the OS will start bogging down, and then performance will suffer. I saw what my teenage cousin runs on her 3 year old laptop, and it blew my mind; by the time her computer was up and running, music was streaming from the web, pop-ups and notifications were plastering her screen, there were a dozen icons flashing in her task bar, the disk was chattering non-stop, and she didn't even start any "real" programs like Word!

If on the other hand, you're just looking at web sites like notebookreview.com, working on a few Word documents, using Skype and Live Messenger, then I *think* you'll be okay (I cannot state a certainty b/c I haven't run your exact mix of applications, and I'm not sure what your expectations are). You can get the 2 extra GB of RAM for the machine as cheap (26.99 at crucial.com) insurance, stick with XP vs. Vista; Vista likes to stretch its legs and use all the resources that your machine has--that's why people complain about it so much.

The 2530p also has an advantage in that it doesn't come with a lot of the bloatware which ships on HP's consumer grade notebooks, so there will be a lot fewer parasitic processes running in the background.

One note: if performance is a concern, do not get the 2530p with the optical drive--the 1.8" disk is much slower than the 2.5" drive which the model you're interested in has.

Final disclaimer: I could talk about this subject for quite some time; putting down information in a written format limits what I can communicate, so there's a lot that I am omitting. Also, "your mileage may vary", so please don't blame me if you listen to my advice and are not happy with the outcome. I'd love to hear from other users of similar machines with workloads more similar to yours; that's usually the only reliable predictor of performance.

Hope this helps!

 

That's going to be you're bottleneck, more so than the CPU. The 1.8" drive runs about 32mb/s. Much slower than a 2.5" drive, which can double that performance. But the dilemma is, the 1.8" drive is quite power efficient, so if you do use the optical bay for a 2.5" drive you'll sacrifice some battery life.

A better solution would be to replace the 1.8" drive with SSD with is also quite power efficient. There is this bargain 64GB Samsung SLC 100/80 for $175US: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147056&CMP=AFC-C8Junction

Or if you need more space, there are other "Samsung Slim SSD" on Ebay at 128GB capacity. Though they go for > $350US and are slightly lower spec at 90/70.

The 2530P SSD models comes shipped with the 80/160GB Intel X18-M, very fast SSD, but would be a far pricier option.

 

Thanks for mentioning the SSD; I had totally forgotten about it b/c I needed more capacity. I'm eyeing a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive myself...