Am I Overdoing it With My Configuration??!!

Hey y'all!

I had to return an Asus had recently bought becuz it was just TOO slow. So i visited Best Buy and went on the Sony Site and configured one that with their 200.00 savings comes in just under $300.00 more than the Asus, but has 10 times the specs. Can you tell me if there is such a thing as "over configuring it?!" The specs are as follows:

Model#: CW290X
i5 540M Processor (2.53GHz/3.06 GHz w Turbo Boost)
6 GB Ram
Nvidia GE Force GT 330M 512 dedicated graphics
320 GB Hard Drive - 7200rpm
Blue Ray Player (Not Burner)
High Capacity Battery

Those few items were so cheap to upgrade, it seemed dumm not to, but then again, will those upgrades leave me with NO battery life?

I thought perhaps a little less power and then i wouldn't need the high capacity battery (that was the most expensive (+100.00) i checked passmark on the cpu, video card etc, all looked good but i'm clearly clueless how it all runs together.

My needs are as follows:

not to see that lil blue circle everytime i open more than 3 windows

thanks so much

Dumm

 

You will most certainly NOT see the "little blue circle". I routinely run about 12 tabs per window in about 4-5 different windows on Google Chrome, with iTunes, Skype, Nokia Ovi Suite, and an office document of any given kind... at one time with no hiccups in music or any slowdown of any kind really. Bless Intel..lol

 

SSDs will eliminate the blue circle problem you have identified. Nearly any computer using an SSD will be dramatically faster in terms of load time of applications. If this is your concern, get an SSD...

 

Sorry, it is amazing how easily people can convince themselves and others about getting stuff that it is not necessary.
Even 5400 HDD would hardly be cause of the blue circle ( unless he didnt defrag since 10 years), he ordered 7200 which is more then enough for normal user.
SSD as supposed solution for it is total b.. sh... .

 

Okay. Before you judge, please understand that I have SSD experience first hand. The difference in my quality of use is.. stunning. I very rarely have the hour glass/blue circle, because my load times are reduced to nearly nill for ... everything. Even visual studio. Visual Studio takes around.. Let me test.

Somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds to load. I get the 'little blue circle' for that long. When I used to load visual studio when I used a 5400, it would take... I dunno, 15 seconds?

It might me that I'm misunderstanding what the fellow is asking, but what I'm saying is anything but BS.

SSDs have a huge impact on perceived, day to day performance.

To paraphrase Anand from Anandtech.com, there is no single upgrade to your computer that you can make that will alter your experience any more than changing from HDD to SSD. This is because the HDD remains the most common bottle neck for day to day performance (such as, opening firefox). Not processors.

 

"This is because the HDD remains the most common bottle neck for day to day performance such as, opening firefox"
Sure thing- you really need SSD to load those Gigas and Terabytes of firefox, golden LAN cable will make it even faster , though not during fullmoon nights.

 

Anandtech was talking about a system that otherwise is a good performer. I'm thinking he had a ULV in that Asus laptop, which aim for battery life rather than performance.

 

It's not primarily a question of data throughput but of IOPS/latency. Starting a program from SSD is nearly like getting it from the cache.
I changed the harddrive in my Z for an Intel SSD (1st gen) and I will definitely never(!) buy a notebook with a "traditional" harddrive again. It's so much better and well worth the cost.

 

lsr is correct, it's an issue of latency, not data throughput.

When my OS opens, it's ready within a second of the desktop appearing. There's none of that loadtime associated with opening various support applications. That's where it's first immediately recognizable. Note this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt6VbOY3xE0&feature=related

I'm not speaking from an anecdotal 'omg 1337' perspective. I'm speaking empirically.


Solinx is correct, Anand was speaking of an otherwise good performer, but the specs provided by OP are quite good specs. Increasing processor speed would not significantly help his problem (as I understand his problem to be related to application load time).

Increasing processor speed (or number of cores) would really only help for some games but more importantly for video/audio encoding/decoding (which tend to be multicored by nature).

Again, let me stress, for anyone confused:
An SSD's every day performance benefit over an HDD is not the amount of data it can transfer, it is how quickly it can target individual pieces of data. An HDD has to spin and physically move to a sector on the storage disc. An SSD can access the same data effectively instantly.

You _will_ notice an every day benefit from using an SSD over a traditional HDD, however some SSD controllers can lead to degradation of performance over time... So do be wary.

 

But... the OP didn't post the specs on the ASUS he's coming from. For all we know he could have been using something with an SU2300 with 2GB of slow memory and a 5400RPM HDD. You'd see the "blue circle" on that alot! SSD's are good for a lot of things but I don't really think they're ready for mainstream yet. Between the maintence and firmware updates and such, most people are WAY better off with a speedy 7200RPM drive. SSD is not the answer to everything, though some people seem to think it is. HDD storage is far from being obsolete.

 

I agree. It has its roles.

My particular point was that if load time is the problem, SSD will cure any load time (ie, latency) issues. Another poster suggested that SSDs are snake oil, which is patently incorrect.

I will admit, though, I was coming from the possibly flawed perception that OP would have the technical capability to deal with the 'newness' of SSDs, though I don't think they're quite as unstable as they're made to sound. I use... Three. I installed one on my home desktop for an OS drive and found it so useful I installed one at work, and one in my fiance's laptop. I've had nothing but good results since.

 

S.S.D. can make a big difference, but I wouldn't say it is needed to speed up load times, especially when you have several things open. Once a program is open, it typically is not thrashing the hard drive, therefore something else is slowing you down at that point. The same applies to CPU cycles, once open and if it's not doing anything, a program will leave the CPU idle. Multiple programs tax memory.

Easiest fix to speed up any system is more memory. 2gigs should be considered the very bare minimum. I have 4gigs in my notebook and 8gigs in my desktop. I rarely wait on anything to load no matter how much is open. I really recommend 4gigs with 64bit. With as cheap as memory is, there is no reason not to load up on it.

Would an SSD speed me up? Certainly and that is on the list for the next round of upgrades once prices come back down (solid state memory was falling then spiked back up). Once back down to previous levels I will be getting some.

 

On you tube there was a video of a guy who put SSD on his HP Envy 15. Full windows boot in 20 seconds

 

SSD is no snake oil, can be very useful and speed up lots of things but, saying it will help with 3 firefox windows is ridiculous - recommended reading subjects - RAM. BTW. Before anyone wastes money on SSD they dont need check and test ReadyBoost very effective specially in cases like that.
It is so childlish, once someone spent excessive money on something not really necessary, he goes on mission to convince possibly high number of people to do the same and in this way justify his/her silly, sheeplike consumerism.
The OP will be perfectly fine with the given specs and he does not need SSD.