Should I upgrade??

[akeefer]

Ok, I have an eMachines M6809, AMD Athlon 3200+, 512MB RAM, ATI Mobility 9600 64MB.

Now, how high of a processor would be comparable to this? I do video editing, rendering of MPEG files and all. Adobe Premiere 6.5 and Adobe After Effects.

What Turion would be comparable? What about the Pentium-M? I've been looking at upgrading, maybe to a wide 14" screen or something, would be nice. Something a bit less bulky and a bit better battery life. Any thoughts? I want at least as good speed now. What about graphics card wise?

Is there any models in the $1000 or less range comparable??

Thanks!
Aaron

 

[cheesehead]

Not really.
The Mobile 3200+, if I'm not mistaken, runs at either 2ghz or 2.2ghz. This is roughly comparable to a 1.9ghz Pentium-M, and pretty much identical to a Turion running at the same speed.
To recieve a signifigant upgrade in speed, you'd need to move to a dual-core setup. A dual 1.6ghz Pentium M laptop (which would'nt likely give any benifit other than increased battery life ) would run you at least 1500$, at the least; 2000$ would get you a dual 1.83 laptop, which would give you a difference in speed of no more than 20%. (rough guess.)
I would reccomend upgrading your RAM first. RAM (and, if you're working with large files, HDD speed) can greatly impact performance. Upgrading from 512mb to 1GB and from a 4200/2mb hard drive to a 7200/8mb hard drive can make a large difference.