I'm posting this on behalf of my friend, who is about to buy a
laptop. She has a DV camera that's from back when they cost a bit,
and a new Flip HD. She still very satisfactorily uses the DV camera
with her 2004 Mac, which is a 1 ghz machine, possibly 1.3, with 1 gb
of RAM. Her pc is older still, a 1 ghz machine with 512 mb of RAM.
Obviously these are long in the tooth now, and we've been looking at a
Packard Bell for £549 which has:

4gb of RAM
a core 2 duo 2.1 ghz processor
320 gb hard drive (haven't checked it's the seemingly recommended
7200rpm but I think so)

it has a nVidia deidicated graphics chip with 512 mb
It's 64 bit with 64 bit Windows on it (that may have sounded a bit
naive, but I am!)

I've played one of her Flip films, which is barely 45 seconds long, on
my two year old Toshiba - 1.6 ghz dual core, 2 gb RAM, having tried
Windows 7 and its native Vista - and though it plays beautifully in
Windows Media Player, it is slightly jumpy in Windows Movie Maker.
I've also tried Sony Vegas 9. Windows 7 gave better results - for
example with Vista I was only getting sound in Windows Movie Maker
with just a black video area - but it's still not ideal.

My desktop PC has a faster processor, a 3ghz dual core AMD, a 7200rpm
hard drive and 1 gb of RAM for the moment, with similar results using
Vegas. Both my machines do fine with non HD material. I'm assuming
the Flip doesn't have a setting for lower quality video, or that my
friend would rather not use that if so.

Will the Packard Bell eliminate the shortfall in smoothness?

My friend seems decided on not getting anewer Mac, partly price-wise,
and this Packard Bell seems quite astounding value feature-wise and is
easy to find in Currys and PC World.

I've watched the Performance section of Task Manager, and on this
Packard Bell using Media player 1.1 gb of RAM was used and very low
cpu, about 10 or 15 %, against maybe 30% on my Toshiba - all using the
same Flip HD video.

Are there other factors? I have read right about this dedicated video
and that will help? I was surprised to see only 600mb of RAM and 30%
of cpu used watching this video on my laptop and still to see the
stuttery look, but maybe that's just my onbaord graphics. It doesn't
concern me for myself as video is not my thing, but I just did a bit
of tinkering to help my friend.

What do you think?

Thanks for all replies. She may buy tomorrow, so... when you're
ready...

ink?

Thanks for all replies. *She may buy tomorrow, so... when you're
ready...



This is it, by the way:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ategory_ oid=

Cheers.

"poachedeggs" wrote in message
...
ink?

Thanks for all replies. She may buy tomorrow, so... when you're
ready...



This is it, by the way:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ategory_ oid=

Cheers.

It doers have graphics acceleration for HD, but why not stick the clip on a
memory stick and try for yourself in Shop

On Feb 4, 10:27*pm, "Trev" invalid wrote:
"poachedeggs" wrote in message

...

ink?

Thanks for all replies. *She may buy tomorrow, so... when you're
ready...

This is it, by the way:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...essionID=@@@@0....

Cheers.

It doers have graphics acceleration for HD, but why not stick the clip on a
memory stick and try for yourself in Shop

Yes, we plugged the Flip straight in in the shop and it was fine in
Media Player, but of course we were unable to see what it's like in
some software like Vegas. Even Movie Maker isn't installed by default
with Windows 7, so we were stumped there. She's bought it now, so I'm
keeping my fingers crossed that all is well.