Is PII(300mhz) dell laptop a feasbile starter carputer? - Page 2

TruckinMP3 · 07-26-2007, 07:50 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by kostyanj

I love people who are tough online. But beyond that, I said that winamp is bloated because in my personal experience it takes forever to load and play on my 2.0 ghz laptop. Now if you're talking about older versions of Winamp then I can agree that that is one of the best audio players available. I don't like all the skins and new features in Winamp.

I would suggest that a 2.0 ghz system should play even the new versions of WinAmp fast... but your original statement was fairly blanket in nature.

Maybe you have a performance issue in your set up

Cutrara · 07-26-2007, 05:40 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by kostyanj

I love people who are tough online. But beyond that, I said that winamp is bloated because in my personal experience it takes forever to load and play on my 2.0 ghz laptop. Now if you're talking about older versions of Winamp then I can agree that that is one of the best audio players available. I don't like all the skins and new features in Winamp.

What processor are you using with a 2.0 Ghz laptop? My Pentium 1.73 runs up-to-date winamp fine... The only thing that takes a bit to load is Adobe software, (photoshop, acrobat) and thats to be expected. my crappy 2.0 celeron even ran it fine.

breaker021 · 08-06-2007, 09:52 AM

winamp IS bloated - use a very very old version. the old version is very very sleek and efficient - doesnt hog your computer.

Rafster · 08-06-2007, 09:07 PM

I use the newest Winamp on a PIII 600 with 256RAM and it runs quickly w/o any hitches....

I don't know what you all are talking about "bloated"....

Rafster

DeltaFX · 08-08-2007, 10:32 AM

Ah, winamp is for lazzy coderz dudes.... bass.dll rul3z

jacksonloh0 · 08-23-2007, 07:31 AM

Quote:

I love people who are tough online.

BDSM anyone. Ha ha ha Just kidding.

I on other hand prefer VLC or VLC Portable. I have a Pentium MMX running Win98SE

for my Torrent PC at home.

Back to topic, any laptop you get hand of is OK IMHO. At least that is the platform for you to geek around with it. To gain experience and to get comfortable before putting a more permenant spec. More cheaper.

DodgeCummins · 09-20-2007, 08:18 PM

I think everyone here that uses winamp has either a 2.97ish or 5.1ish verson, with everything turned off.

It easily runs on the slowest machine I have used...p90...how can you call it bloatware?

spud42 · 09-24-2007, 05:18 AM

i agree , pre version 3 of winamp runs at less than 20% cpu on my AMD K62-450 setup. i suppose we all like winamp because it was all there was when we started this hobby .
winamp,irman and a 2x 16 lcd display. ahhh i remember kiddies when it all started...

BiG K · 09-24-2007, 08:03 AM

I have to say, 300mhz is not alot of power for running XP. I can gurantee you will largely be disappointed with your carputer, simply because not having enough horsepower. If you simply want a carputer to play MP3's, why not just buy a MP3 cd player??

A decent second hand MP3 cd player is easily attainable for $80 and is alot easier to integrate!

But and it is a big BUT, purchasing a screen, cables, amplifier , keyboard/input devices etc etc will easily cost you atleast $300. My advice is, take your time to research your decision, it may not be a wise move to use a 300mhz laptop for a carputer. Sure a 240mhz tablet pc might have been fine at multitasking, but the tablet PC's are quite new as well, they have a highly optimized operating system for the specification. For example my home computer is about the same spec as a xbox 360, but an xbox 360 can easily run rings around my computer. Why you ask? Because the xbox 360 has a highly optimized operating system to take advantage of the hardware, whilst windows xp is a more general type of computer.

If all you want is a carputer for mp3's, why bother?? It might look cool, but then why not just pick up a indash dvd player for $200 and save yourself the hassle??

TruckinMP3 · 09-24-2007, 11:19 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by BiG K

I have to say, 300mhz is not alot of power for running XP. I can gurantee you will largely be disappointed with your carputer, simply because not having enough horsepower. If you simply want a carputer to play MP3's, why not just buy a MP3 cd player??

A decent second hand MP3 cd player is easily attainable for $80 and is alot easier to integrate!

But and it is a big BUT, purchasing a screen, cables, amplifier , keyboard/input devices etc etc will easily cost you atleast $300. My advice is, take your time to research your decision, it may not be a wise move to use a 300mhz laptop for a carputer. Sure a 240mhz tablet pc might have been fine at multitasking, but the tablet PC's are quite new as well, they have a highly optimized operating system for the specification. For example my home computer is about the same spec as a xbox 360, but an xbox 360 can easily run rings around my computer. Why you ask? Because the xbox 360 has a highly optimized operating system to take advantage of the hardware, whilst windows xp is a more general type of computer.

If all you want is a carputer for mp3's, why bother?? It might look cool, but then why not just pick up a indash dvd player for $200 and save yourself the hassle??

All valid points.

I use a 300mhz system because:

It was in the closet not being used for anything else.
Easy to power
it's been installed for far longer than Ipods have been available

Xp runs just fine for what I want
I use the OEM sound system so other expenses did not come into play.

The trick for anyone considering an install, carefully consider what you want and a budget. The person that should be happy with the results is you.

I am happy with my system, I may still change it in the future.

Jistari · 12-05-2007, 03:52 AM

Searching for threads on how much power is enough (ya I know....its never enough) and came across this.

So what is a decent spec (CPU wise) for a dedicated car pc (box, not a lap top) to run xm through usb, play media off the hd and run bluetooth and nav with a front end ?

I think Im settled on the Xenarc 7000 as the head unit, just trying to figure out which pc to attach?

GizmoQ · 12-05-2007, 12:30 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Jistari

Searching for threads on how much power is enough (ya I know....its never enough) and came across this.

So what is a decent spec (CPU wise) for a dedicated car pc (box, not a lap top) to run xm through usb, play media off the hd and run bluetooth and nav with a front end ?

I think Im settled on the Xenarc 7000 as the head unit, just trying to figure out which pc to attach?

Any of the VIA boxes should work (900Mhz or better). I ran a 500Mhz Pentium M for a number of years. Only real reason to upgrade was for flash skins and heavy multitasking. XM is actually one of the least tasking functions of the carPC. Videos is worst cause the older/cheaper your motherboard the more likely it has less video memory or shared video memory which is extremely taxing on the processor.

Jistari · 12-06-2007, 03:31 AM

Now thats info I can use :-))) Thx guy.

<Still reading....and reading . . .>
BTW, is this true ?
"Even if your computer is totally OFF, a PC will still consume a few hundred milliwatts, needed to monitor PC ON/OFF status. When the computer (car pc) is in the suspend/sleep mode, it will consume even more power, because the RAM needs to be powered at all times. The power consumption in the suspend mode is few watts.
No matter how big your car battery is, it will eventually drain your vehicle / car battery in a matter of days."

Yup, I know about the intelligent controllers that monitor the battery and shut down from sleep, but what about the first line ? I.E. ok, the controller shuts down from sleep, but if the above is true, it is still drawing power and will eventually kill the battery?

I gotta be clear on this, I do keep the car on a battery tender when not in use "most" of the time, but 1) it's a Corvette (notoriously battery eating vehicle) and 2) the Red Top AGM vehicle battery that it uses is "notoriously expensive".

So the simple question is,
A) Will any car pc in the system kill the battery in a vehicle (thats not on a tender) if left long enough?
8) If A is true, would it not be easey to put a cutoff switch in the power lead to the computer and just deal with a cold boot if leaving the vehicle for a longer period?

Still reading up on processors, have a clue when it comes to P2 P4 Celeron P4M C2 C2d in regards to the relative processing power between each of those, but all the new chips (well new to me, I guess you could say all the non desktop/ laptor chips) are harder for me to quantify.

qha_vn · 12-06-2007, 04:31 AM

i am installing RR on a pentium mmx 333MHz, 64MB RAM, 4.3GB HDD, win98SE, winamp 2.95 it works like a champ. OS start up time is less then 30 seconds, shutdown time is amazingly less then 4 secs.

If i compare start up/ shutdown time of my IBM T40 (winxp sp2 centrino 1.5GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD), it takes several minutes and sometimes up to 5 min actually

so be happy with that specs

Jistari · 12-06-2007, 09:28 PM

Hmm, that makes sense when you think about it. The lower spec system must be optimized (the windows install that is) and probably loads a lot less stuff. The better system (which btw did you mean you are using in a car pc environment, or is that one of your desktops ?) has more mem to check at startup as well as probably more overhead to load.

I dont anticipate any box I buy having a problem sending digitized music out the soundcard to the head unit. Its more of a concern about task switching through the front end (switiching from say a nav screen and back to whatever media you are playing) and pretty much the graphics power of the system.
I have some understanding of common desktop video processors (nVidia, Radeon) and their chipset capabilities, but when it comes to these onboard graphics chipsets, Im clueless.

Not sure how much juice (system memory, graphics proscessing power and how taxing it is to move the data from the gps reciever across the bus to the cpu for proscessing) you need to keep tha nav app running nicely. I remember running MS Streets and Trips with a GPS receiver on my wifes laptop, it ran ok and that machine was a 1.4 G Celeron M with 500M mem and whatever Compaq was using for video at the time with XP Ser 2 ( so I wouldnt classify it as a powerful box), but I also wasnt enamored by the amount of clicks it takes to run that app (dont know if it would play well in a car pc on a small touch screen).

We (the people looking to start in car computing) are at a disadvantage in that you pretty much never get to see, first hand, one of the systems you are considering in action. Yes, there are some demo videos, but just about everyones install is different in some way.

Do the car pc's mostly get their video memory as shared system memory ?

I would imagine I'm looking for something in a mobile box that has about the same performance as a desktop configured as follows :

P4 2 ghz 512 MB Geoforce 4 with 128 MB on an 800 Mhz FSB Win XP ser 2

That sound like enough juice for a car pc to run a front end with nav/xm ?

Any idea what type of mobile proscessor or which of the setups on mp3car store may perform similarly?