questions about R4000

if anyone out there has any input for someone who will be doing video capturing on-the-fly through the firewire...

1. would my money be better spent getting more RAM (I'm thinking 1-2 Gigs) or a faster processor (Athlon 64 3500- 4000) to improve video capture/ editing performance?

2. what kind of battery life can I expect with the 12-cell battery? (most of the time I'll be doing office stuff but occasionally I'll be capturing video or giving presentations).

3. I saw that some of you got some great deals through office depot , but I wasn't able to order the R4000 online... do I have to go to an actual store for the discount?

thanks!


[ ]

 

yup. gotta go into the store. Tell them you want to "configure to order" CTO an R4000. They go to the techdepot website, but they get to configure one there, you can't do that at home. another place i think you can do it from home is Costco's website. They have some dang good prices, and the best return policy going, 6 months instore return, no questions. thats what the costco online rep told me. costco doesn't sell these ones (zvk, r4k, zd8k, x6k) in the store, they're web only. I had ordered a preconfigured zv6000 from costco, but cancelled the order when OD came in better and cheaper, but now i don't know who wins. good luck searchin.[ ]

 

woops, I meant to mention that it sounds like you and i are gonna be using the lappy for similar things. I intend to mostly use it for video capture/ edit with adobe premiere pro. Im also going to use it for sound capture through a USB dac. I use a nice Shure wireless mic on people for videos, and the receiver can be set up to dump the sound onto the hard drive through the USB device, and then mated up with the video later for much nicer vocal tracks than the digicam picks up. I also run sound for a rock band and use the USB to pump a little sound throgh the system before and after gigs when the band isn't up.

I ordered the 3500+ with 1gig ram and of course the 128MB video card, i went with the brightview (still wish it was 17in and higher resolution) and the bluetooth/wireless setup. My cell has bluetooth so they'll talk (can use the cell phone's data stream to run totally mobile internet if need be, that gets spendy though) Also got the 12 cell, although realistically i'll usally be plugged in, inverter in the car... after one rebate mine cost $1155 that seemed like a real nice price point for what i'm gettin. I paid double that for my current desktop that is pretty much even as far as features. I will definitely post up how mine works for video capture when i get it (supposed to be here in a couple days) later

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by dmike

 

I just want to note if you plan on replacing BOTH ram chips it is a pain in the butt to get to the one under the keyboard.

You have to:

1) Remove a bunch of screws on the bottom.
2) Pry off the plastic piece above the keyboard. It is on pretty damn tight and the service manual "suggests" putting a flathead screwdiver under a little slot above the insert key and prying it out. I can imagine it is easy to either snap the plastic lid or scratch the surface underneath it if one is not careful.
3) Pull off a large silver sticker that is covering the section the ram is located in. This is probably how they can tell if you've messed with the internal ram slot if you send it in for repair for any reason. The sticker will go on, but if you're not careful it will get wrinkled.

Doesn't sound like much, but it is way more than it takes to replace the ram in just about any other notebook out there. Usually you just unsnap a couple of clips and take out a screw or two and you're done.

I'm not sure how it is for the HP model, but the service manual did have more steps to take for replacing internal memory on it.

 

You can configure the r4000 on techdepot from anywhere. Just click on the link that says "view more hp notebooks." The instore price will be slightly off, but sometimes with a better instore only rebate.

 

Thanks for all the input, everyone! This should help save me some money.

I'll purchase either the RV4000 or the ZV6000 in the next few days and will report on how the unit performs.