Coping with the Compaq CQ56-115DX - Life After the NVIDIA Settlement

[shinobi1]

lol they don't do it to screw people over, they do it because read and write speeds of flash memory are much slower and normally not enough storage space for practical use. I'm not so sure an sd card will be faster than an internal hard drive especially since the read/write rates were limited to like 20 or 30MB/s? My 1TB hard drive read/writes at 80+ MB/s

Maybe. But I think for MS it was/is a licensing issue. They're pretty prickly over such things. Remember, they went out of their way to make it tough to put a Vista OS on a USB thumb drive.

As for speed, there's more than just Xfer rate. Latency enters in to the calculation. Still, I confess to concerns you could be correct about SD vs. HDD. I will know in the fullness of time . . . . . . . . . . . I hope.

[nambinhvu]

Maybe. But I think for MS it was/is a licensing issue. They're pretty prickly over such things. Remember, they went out of their way to make it tough to put a Vista OS on a USB thumb drive.

As for speed, there's more than just Xfer rate. Latency enters in to the calculation. Still, I confess to concerns you could be correct about SD vs. HDD. I will know in the fullness of time . . . . . . . . . . . I hope.

Another thing, I'm not sure if you were able to or not, but I can't seem to partition SD cards and such, I think they said there was a way with linux, but I have yet to partition one successfully, though I haven't really been trying, since I don't really see the point XD

[TonyJZX]

here's my story

i bought a CQ42 AMD with the v120 for a few hundred bucks... i knew it would be slow but since i've worked with Atoms I didn't think it would be that bad

with the basic OEM copy of Win7 with all the HP bloat it wasn't too good

i reinstalled Windows and it was a bit better but still not good... i think it struggled with HD video

i surfed ebay and found two CPU Options... either a 2.8ghz dual core Athlon X2 or a 2.0 quad core Phenom, both under $100 from China.

I chose the Phenom since its quad and it looks like it had less temperature.

Be aware this meant the laptop went from a 25w cpu to a 35w so expect a bit more heat.

Downloaded the service manual and had to completely disassemble the laptop to install the CPU.

Reassemble, big breath, turn on.

Unit works fine!

Now here is what I have... a 2kg 14" laptop with quad core power 4gb ram, 500gb hdd... very nice, very fast, plays video fine and is almost a portable workstation with that quad.

Great laptop however I would not recommened it unless you are very familiar with laptop repair.

[nambinhvu]

Great laptop however I would not recommened it unless you are very familiar with laptop repair.

I dunno about the CQ42, but the CQ56 was pretty easy to replace. As long as people know that they need to clean off the heat sink and put new thermal paste before putting it back together, they should be fine following the service manual, even first timers. The only thing that stops people from working on their own computers is fear of making things worse, but once you overcome that fear, you're golden.

[Deldrin]

Are any of you CQ56-115DX rats using Windows 8 yet?

If yes, how's it running?

If no, why not??

Me?

Windows 8 does not, so far at least, sound to me a good OS for the CQ56-115DX. Sounds more like it's mobile stuff oriented. So I'm not jumping on board just yet. Will wait and see how other folks do.

Regardless, MickeySoft sure is pushing 8 big time. Giveaways . . all the rest.

The following is unrelated to 8:

I read a report yesterday saying MickeySoft purposefully designed Vista so it would not run from a thumb drive.

WABOA!!

Yep. Tried 8 myself on this laptop as well. It's works pretty well. I had a few glitches though. Files copies were really slow (even locally!). When I played music or movies from any program (netflix, mediamonkey, mediaplayer, vlc,... ), they all had the same problem where I would pause the content and then could not unpause it. I had to click on the progress bar or refresh the page (in Netflix's case) to get it going again.

[novovictus]

I picked up a N370 2.5 dual core for $20 shipped of ebay. I wanted one that was in the original spec manual. Maybe in the future I will go with a hotter quad or something. While I was in there I scrapped off the thermal pads and made a copper shim for the video chip. I used arctic silver on both sides of the shim and the proc.

Then I added 2x 4gb sticks of matched corsair.

I upgraded my HD to a Seagate Momentus XT for $100 off new egg. It is a SSD hybrid HDD. It is a native 7200rpm 32mb cache seagate drive hot rodded with a 4 gb SLC. It copies commonly used files onto the SSD portion, and if it fails the platters keep spinning like a traditional HD. Check out the full toms hardware article for details: Momentus XT Review: Seagate's Marriage Of The HDD And Flash Memory : Seagate’s Solid State Hybrid Drive Reviewed
I was even able to just image my machine onto the new disk.

Finally I upgraded my win 7 to win 8 consumer preview, and it is fast as heck with all my mods. I boot in less than 20 seconds, and most apps snap right open. Aero works, and it has neat features like xbox companion, not to mention hydro thunder!

[Deldrin]

I picked up a N370 2.5 dual core for $20 shipped of ebay. I wanted one that was in the original spec manual. Maybe in the future I will go with a hotter quad or something. While I was in there I scrapped off the thermal pads and made a copper shim for the video chip. I used arctic silver on both sides of the shim and the proc.

Then I added 2x 4gb sticks of matched corsair.

I upgraded my HD to a Seagate Momentus XT for $100 off new egg. It is a SSD hybrid HDD. It is a native 7200rpm 32mb cache seagate drive hot rodded with a 4 gb SLC. It copies commonly used files onto the SSD portion, and if it fails the platters keep spinning like a traditional HD. Check out the full toms hardware article for details: Momentus XT Review: Seagate's Marriage Of The HDD And Flash Memory : Seagate’s Solid State Hybrid Drive Reviewed
I was even able to just image my machine onto the new disk.

Finally I upgraded my win 7 to win 8 consumer preview, and it is fast as heck with all my mods. I boot in less than 20 seconds, and most apps snap right open. Aero works, and it has neat features like xbox companion, not to mention hydro thunder!

I've gone your route to the T almost, except haven't picked up a proc yet. I've 8GB of ram and the Seagate Momentus XT only at one time I had Win8 on here, but have since gone back to 7. That was the consumer preview though and not the latest release.

For proc, I'm more comfortable buying new (your $20 one was probably use?). So I'm waiting for the right one at the right price.

My boot on the hybrid HD was fast at first, but has since slowed down. It's about 40sec to login and then another 30-40 sec to the desktop with all my startup apps loaded. It used to be about 35sec to login and another 20sec to desktop with startup apps loaded. I haven't investigated why it increase so much.

[novovictus]

For proc, I'm more comfortable buying new (your $20 one was probably use?). So I'm waiting for the right one at the right price.

I have done each of these upgrades gradually over time, so I never saw one big speed boost, but incrementally it is way better. Yes the CPU was used, but you couldn't beat $20 at the time.

As far as your drive, I am wondering if the solid state memory failed. It has a 5 year warranty and they haven't been out that long, so I would call seagate and see if they have some diagnostics to check it.

[Deldrin]

I have done each of these upgrades gradually over time, so I never saw one big speed boost, but incrementally it is way better. Yes the CPU was used, but you couldn't beat $20 at the time.

As far as your drive, I am wondering if the solid state memory failed. It has a 5 year warranty and they haven't been out that long, so I would call seagate and see if they have some diagnostics to check it.

Thank you. I'm browsing their forums first just to gather some intel on it. I'll need to check what firmware version I'm on and see if there's an update for it.

[shinobi1]

Thank you. I'm browsing their forums first just to gather some intel on it. I'll need to check what firmware version I'm on and see if there's an update for it.

I hope you keep us updated regarding your progress . . . or lack thereof.

I'm gonna make an admission:

I like the idea of a SSD. But every time one is on sale, e.g. at the Egg, and I go and read the reviews, there are SO many previous buyers who are having one problem or another.

The positive reviews are usually from recent buyers. Those who have owned their SSD for a while . . . well . . . things for them are so often not working out. I mean, it's not like the darn things are inexpensive!!

I bought a stupid MMC adapter that didn't work. Well, actually I was the stupid one. But anyway, I'm out fifteen bucks so sue me. You are not paying fifteen bucks for these SSDs that also, all to often, fail either partially or completely. You can't buy a real SSD for fifteen bucks, or any amount close to that. I'm still not ready to risk buying a product that has not been perfected. Can you imagine if mechanical hard drives performed as inconsistently as SSDs. Well, they do not!!!