Can a processor be too slow for 5Mbit broadband?

[dancingmatt]

Hi all

Let me quickly pick your brains – when I get broadband connected I'm getting an 8Mb service, and apparently the line will only go to 5Mbit.

My boss is selling his old Vaio laptop, it’s a Pentium III 750Mhz, 192MB, 18GB HDD, Windows 2000 SP3, 1024x768 24-bit colour/1280x1024 16-bit colour TFT screen, 8X DVD and 56kbps modem. Model PCG-9291. No wireless but I've got a USB dongle to make do with.

Basically my main reason for considering buying it is to sit on the sofa at home and type or do some web browsing. No serious software or need for lots of storage, got my PCs for that.

And it just made me wonder - presuming I get a speed of something like 5Mb down the broadband, will this PIII 750MHz, 192MB laptop be able to make the most of it? Or will I spend ages waiting for web pages, not to download but to be processed?

It should be more than capable, shouldn’t it? Broadband wasn’t around when PIIIs were so I don’t know but my old Pentium 120 used to cope ok with dialup, I just thought it was the line holding back the PC. With this laptop it might be the other way around?

I think I'm asking a silly question but since I don't really need to buy the laptop, I really don't want to buy it and then find it doesn't do what I want it for!

Ta

DM

[Moby-Dick]

You'll be fine - Ethernet is much faster than your broad band , and has been used long before pentiums

FYI I happy used an old Duron laptop as an FTP server on a 10 Mbit line

[abeacock]

I have a P3 900MHz laptop which is just fine for internet surfing, OpenOffice, etc.

It will even easily run a Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory lan server for up to 8 people!

You will be fine for sofa-surfing!

What price are they asking for it? I hope it's not much above £150.

[Papa Lazarou]

A lot of 8meg internet connections will actually be pegged at a lower speed. My 8meg Nildram connection is currently testing at around 6.4mbps.

[EtheAv8r]

For wireless a PCIA card will be better than a USB... but that machine will be fine for what you laid out. Web browsing does not tax a PC at all.

The 8 Meg service is called MAX... because that is the max theroetical speed on a perfect connection (next door to the exchange). Depending on cable quality the speed drops off the further from the exchange you get. I get 4Mb form my MAX connection, and being very rural and about 3.4 from the exchange I am very pleased with that!

[dancingmatt]

Thanks for your help everyone. Just as I expected then.

So £80 for this (without a battery though) seems a good deal?

Thanks

DM

[Steve B]

yeap sounds like a bargain to me

[MadduckUK]

yeah go for it. if a Cyrix MII 300 can use a 10 meg connection trhat speed daemon will be fine.

seriously tho. we have a P3 733 with 256MB ram at work and it copes perfectly, its the "opening a few programs and it starting to slooooow dowwwwwwn" thats the problem not the DSL connection.

[snedger]

On a 10Mb internet connection my 1GHz PIII loads web pages noticably slower than my more up to date PCs - but it's relative and if I didn't know it was slower then I would be happy enough.
My gf was running a Win98 200Mhz PC on 1Mb and it was so slow loading webpages I cannot believe she put up with it for so long.

[Steve B]

you mean it actually loads the webpages, or loads the applications to view the webpages slower?

[snedger]

On my 1GHz, starting apps like IE, Firefox or Thunderbird is nearly instantaneous.
Loading webpages are slower - you can see how pages are structured as different areas are loaded one after an other.
Used to be even slower when it was the gateway for a peer to peer network. Getting a router really saved that PC from the tip.
Thinking about it, it's more likely down to the Geforce 3 graphics card than the CPU.

[DanceswithUnix]

Modern web browsers do seem to be quite the CPU hog, specially when you get all those lovely moving gif adverts and flash animations.

The network speed aspect is fine, but you might feel the page rendering time.

[cotswoldcs]

I've got a PII-450Mhz Laptop with Wireless adaptor and Windows XP SP2. It copes. slowly. very slowly. But it works...

[dancingmatt]

Pleased to report I've bought the laptop, tried it with someone else's broadband (and I don't know what speed they have) and had no problems surfing pages. Even managed to watch some video streamed as it downloaded from Youtube. Not a site I ever bother to look at, but it sprung to mind as a good test of rendering and bandwidth. And it passed surprisingly well.

Thanks again for everyone's help

DM

[Apex]

The only things i would change out of the lot is at least 256mb of mem for the laptop and maybe one of the new hdds with 5400rpm 8mb cache but only if the price is right

[dancingmatt]

No idea about the speed of the existing HDD but I see from Sony's site that it can't go above 256MB of RAM. Since it's got 192MB, hardly seems worth the outlay for a small increase.

DM