Compaq Evo n1020v - Hot stuff!
The majority are Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz models. (Not the Pentium 4-M chips but the standard Pentium 4 desktop chips.)
Is that an issue?
Yes!
The Pentium 4 gets really hot really fast. In fact the cooling fan comes on within about 5 minutes of turning the notebook on. The fan sounds like a regular desktop cooling fan too, it's REALLY LOUD! Added to that the heatsink required to cool such a hot chip is substancial. As a result the notebook is rather large and quite heavy(3.5KG). Also since the CPU uses a lot of power the battery needs to be a lot bigger and heavier in order for the notebook to have half decent battery life.
The Compaq Evo n1020v and other notebooks based on desktop chips should not be thought of as a laptops. They are portable desktops / desktop replacements.
If you're looking for a real laptop then choose a unit with either an Intel Pentium-M or an AMD Turion 64 processor.
----How did the Pentium 4 end up in notebooks?----
The heat problem with the Pentium 4 meant that it took Intel sometime to get the Pentium 4 tweaked for mobile use. When the Pentium 4-M did finally hit it ran at rather slow speeds (1.4GHz - 2GHz), which meant very lack luster performance, since the Pentium 4 requires high clock speeds to clear it's long pipelines.
The whole Pentium 4 mobile muddle opened the door for the Pentium-III design to make a return as the Pentium-M seen in Intel's Centrino technology.
posted by Aline @ 11:25 am
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hi there,
I posted a little story about my Compaq Evo N1020V as a blog comment, but anyways, wanted to say "hi" to you, too.
About Compaq Evo N1020V: it's a nifty machine just like its sister Evo N800V (which I also have). The Evo N800V was my first HP Compaq notebook and I had purchased it when new. I like the small size of these notebooks and also their layout.
And I also run my PCs with max RAM: some of my work involves database and large file manipulation. So having a 1GB of physical memory is handy and gives me better results.
Sometimes notebook's will have a weakest point: I had replaced the keyboard in the N800V once but it wasn't a hassle because I purchased the replacement from the HP website and my college aged son installed it (he stuided the CompTIA A+ training).
My newer Evo N1020V has a 14 inch LCD screen but it has a wonderful resolution and I do not notice any quality difference. Besides, if I needed a larger screen size then I'd hook it up to my 17 inch Sony LCD flat screen DVI monitor. using the small port replicator.
My "Phoenix risking from the ashes" compaq Evo N1020V was purchased as a non-working shell with hard drive and memory missing. I added a brand new Hitachi Travelstar 60GB HDD and got my two 512MB RAM pieces then brought my Compaq to a repair center in Manhattan where a fixed labor rate was charged. Turns out the LCD inverter was bad and the backlight, but that was it! I had a terrific machine for $180 plus the cost of the repair and a new Hitachi travelstar (I would have needed to purchase the RAM anyways and it was about $95 for the two PC2700 SODIMM pieces).
But I have a question for you: my machine is only displaying 960MB of RAM in device manager compared to its sister N800V who displays the full 1GB of RAM. My bios level is
PhoenixBIO 4.0 Release 6.0
Bios date is 02/11/03
Bios ID Compaq Evo N1020v BIOS Version: 0F08
OEM signon is none
Do you know if I have the latest and greatest Bios version? Somehow I do not believe that I do because of the 960MB versus 1GB RAM detection.
Thats because the computer uses SHARED GRAPHICS. 64MB of the RAM is dedicated to the VRAM (video RAM). This allows you to prove that:
960MB = 1024 of RAM - 64MB of VRAM
That's where that 64MB is going...
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