Fujitsu Siemens Laptop in Dunnes at the moment

Redsoxfan

Hi there

Would anyone have the spec/model details for the Fujitsu Siemens laptop that is in Dunnes at the moment?

The auld fella was telling me on the phone that he just bought one for the sister, and while his heart is in the right place, I'm concerned the spec will be too low to run Vista etc.

There's a chance he can return it (he knows people etc.), so I'd like to check out the spec to see if it is up to scratch or can be upgraded easily enough.

Cheers

Redsoxfan

Sorry-found the spec on the Dunnes website

http://www.dunnesstores.ie/page.php?pid=8&section_id=32&sub_section_id=80&range_id=89&product_id=417

Alanstrainor

Well, it'll need more RAM, and the processor is pretty basic, single core 1.86Ghz. And i presume the Hard drive is a typo, as it's marked at 20Gb!

Redsoxfan

Yep, actual HD is 120GB AFAIK.

Re the RAM, you could buy the other model for €100 more with double RAM, but the actual cost of 1GB RAM is much less-of course that depends on the configuration of the RAM at the moment (e.g. if it is 512mb in 2 slots, I guess you would have to buy 2 1GB modules...)

Re. the processor, I thought it was a dual-core??

Intel® Celeron® Dual-Core Processor T1400

kaizersoze

Redsoxfan wrote: »

Re. the processor, I thought it was a dual-core??

Indeed they have and the first I've heard of it.



Still pretty basic though.

Alanstrainor

Redsoxfan wrote: »

Yep, actual HD is 120GB AFAIK.

Re the RAM, you could buy the other model for €100 more with double RAM, but the actual cost of 1GB RAM is much less-of course that depends on the configuration of the RAM at the moment (e.g. if it is 512mb in 2 slots, I guess you would have to buy 2 1GB modules...)

Re. the processor, I thought it was a dual-core??

Sorry about that, intel have two processors called t1400, one dual core, and one single, pretty stupah.

Tom Doyle

I think its A 1GB

Dartz

512kB of Cache... The Pentium M in my three year old Toshiba has twice that, and a clock speed IIRC not far off 1.6Ghz. And that wasnt a top of the range model at the time. While a I know the Core architecture is more efficient than a Pentium M, a Core 2 Duo with half the cache is barely worth it. Core 2' use the cache to send data between the cores without having to go via the system RAM. Having more cache really does speed these things up. They run much more efficiently. The painful lack of cache coupled with with only 1 Gb of RAM, that thing would barely run Vista.

It'd do grand if you could find a copy of Windows XP for it mind...

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Oh of course this would run vista, let alone barely run it. With Vista service pack one there should be no problems. I suspect that your sister isn't going to be playing COD4 on it or any system hogging games for that matter.

I guess comments are comming from people who have pretty good PCs with top end specs?

For the price, it's worth it.

Upgrading laptop ram is not too difficult, I would be interested to see the specs on the motherboard. I doubt it could hold more than 2gb of ram, but that would be plenty.

Dartz

You wouldnt be wrong mind you, but I bought a high end laptop because I had to use 256 Mb on Windows XP.... I got screwed on price and power, because I paid 1000 euro for a laptop with a Pentium M and 256Mb of RAM. Yeah, lol at me for being dumb enough to buy the thing, but still...

My point is, that thing had twice the minimum specs for Windows XP and it was still a bit of a Dog to boot up, especially with AntiVirus software. Just because it will run Vista, doesnt mean it will run it well,

TerrorFirmer

XP runs fine on 256mb of ram with a decent AV app. I used to even play Call of Duty on my old install with a Geforce 4 and 256mb of ram at high settings - it definitely wasn't a dog to boot up either. I guess it would be if you had a hungry AV/various other software upon startup. I've had XP before run on 500mhz and 96mb of ram perfectly fine once I made sure only the basics were starting up.

The Celeron dual core with 2gb of ram would be perfectly fine for Vista. I've seen far worse cpu's tackle Vista fine, the ram will make or break it though, Vista can be incredibly frustrating on anything less then 2gb. In fact I'm using Vista on a laptop with 3gb of ram and it still infuriates me from time to time.

It's not a bad laptop for the price at all really - others in that price range are usually single core Celeron M's etc, worse video cards, and so on.

The Celerons of today are way better then the celerons of yesteryear. People can't let go of the association though.

Dartz

Yeah, this thing had integrated graphics which ate into the memory, and it had to start a bunch of hardware drivers along with the AV. Some of them I couldnt switch off. It just wasnt nice to use. It could do basic stuff like play DvD's but good luck running a word processor while doing that. It had a lot of OEM bloatware, which I uninstalled as much as possible, but it never approached anything resembling 'fast'. It was useable alright.... and could play some older games not requiring dedicated graphics... but it was just utilitarian.

I put a Linux install on it, and compared to what XP had been like, it flew.

I suppose a new core2duo based Celeron is much more efficient than an older pentium, even at the bottom of the range. Even a Core solo would probably do a decent job of it. It's just that running an OS at the bare minimum of it's requirements has been, in my experience, less than fun. I just wouldnt by a Laptop with the minimum recommended RAM for an OS.

Alanstrainor

RAM is so cheap these days that, if the processor is half decent ie. core duo, or even core 2 duo, than i can't see the problem with a machine like the one posted above, just buy extra RAM for it and it should be fine.

sprinklesspanky

the Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo V5535 is being sold at Carphone Warehouse for €379.00. My local Dunnes is also selling the same laptop for €369 and they give €92.50 back in vouchers on your Dunnes Card that can be used at Christmas...

Here is the SPEC:

It's got a Intel Celeron M Processor 550 (2.0 GHz, 1MB 2nd Level Cache, 533 MHz FSB) 1024 MB DDR2 RAM, 120 GB SATA HDD (5400rpm), Intel GMA X3100 with up to 128MB shared memory.