WinXP, swapping and battery life

[AndyKH]

I have previously posted this in the Windows forum (I overlooked this forum).

My girlfriend is buying a laptop, and I?m helping her choose it. As she is on a tight budget I have looked around for great offers, and I have found one. It?s a new ?old? IBM R50 centrino machine with a Banias (hence the term old) Pentium M, 256 MB RAM and 30 GB 4200 RPM HDD.
I am aware that I can find cheaper solutions based Celeron-Ms, but because of her likely usage pattern, I have opted for a Pentium M. She will mostly be doing lab observations (sometimes away from a power plug for extended periods of time), and thus she will be using the computer with many interruptions without turning it off.
Because of the usage pattern I have opted for a Pentium M (even though a Dothan Celeron-M would provide the same amount of L2 cache as the Banias Pentium M) because the crippled Speedstep unit on a Celeron-M will take its toll on battery life. She will be running WinXP (included in the price) on the machine, and she will only be use it for web surfing, email and MS Office.

I realize that both the HDD (low RPM) and the amount of RAM could use improvement. As I don?t want to void the warranty I would like to get the store to supply it with a 5400 RPM HDD instead and then upgrade the RAM later (remember, tight budget), BUT??

Will the low amount of RAM cause so much swapping to the HDD that the power savings made possible by the functional speedstep unit of the Pentium M will be lost to power the HDD (correct me if I?m wrong, but I imagine that the HDD will consume much more power when busy than when idling)?
Considering how the laptop is going to be used, is she then better of with 512 MB RAM from the start (to avoid swapping) and a slower HDD (will it even make a difference with the type of programs used)?

Please post informative answers, and please don?t state that ?this and that brand will be cheaper?. The laptop I have found is way cheaper than a Dell or Acer.

Thanks in advance
Andreas

 

[icarus4586]

While 256MB is on the small side for RAM today, unless she's doing a LOT of websurfing, email, and Office at the same time, it'll be enough. The HDD obviously uses a lot more power when it's spun up, but that'll be the case whether it's swapping or not. They don't actually become idle until the computer's been idle for a while. And "a lot more power" in this case means a lot more than zero, which isn't very much. I'd say stick with the 256MB / Banias.

 

[tiap]

It will run just fine for her use. I would add an aditional 512 If you add to the ram you do not void the ibm waranty. If you upgrade the drive you do not void the waranty, IBM will just not support the drive.
Ibm has available an ultrabay battery that hotswaps in the ultrabay of the r50 for almost double the life. In addition ibm has very very good power saving options to suit almost any user. The faster travelstar drives don't use any more power than the 4500 drives but have dramatic performance increases.
Congradulations on a wise choice and believe me when I say that you will be amazed every time you find a "new to you feature" in a Thinkpad that other laptops don't have.