hi,i was just reading your reply about dvd burners,i have a old pc with 128mb ram but a slow old processor,if i install a dvd burner on to the pc then will it work o.k.im not worried about speeds just if it will work?would appreciate some feedback.
You should be able to get away with it if you follow a couple rules. 1: Close any and all apps that you can, especially those running in the background, before burning. 2: Don't do anything else with the computer when burning a DVD. The process sucks up all your system resources and multitasking will cause problems. 3: If at all possible try and add another stick or two of RAM. The more RAM the merrier. 256MB is good and 512MB is even better 4: Welcome to AD and have fun! _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Gigabyte 8INXP, Intel P4HT 3.06 Mushkin 1024 MB PC2100 Sapphire 9800 Pro Plextor PX-708A/Plextor Premium/LTD-166S M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Browning Hi-Power[/small]
Yep, when it comes to memory more is definately better, but I've found that your pc will only crunch the information as fast as your processor can chew it. For example, I just upgraded from my old system which was a celeron 533, 256mb ram, dvd reader and dvd burner. I did a backup of nemo using dvd shrink and the encoding alone took almost 4 hours! My new system, no speed demon by any means, an xp2600, 1gb ram, same reader and burner, encoding took just over 13 mins. It does work on a slow pc, and if you're intent on keeping your system, I suggest setting the encoding process BEFORE you go to bed at night! A few hundred dollars worth of hardware upgrades will make things a lot quicker and avoid a lot of frustration as far as waiting is concerned. But thats just me and I'm one impatient SOB!
I tried my HP 300i on an old 300mhz computer. Did not work off the system IDE MB. DVD burned, but skipped. So, I put in a firewire card and tried it again with external hook up. Worked great! Not a problem with over 20 burns.
If your PC isn't too terribly old, in addition to the ram, go to Powerleap and see if they don't have an upgrade CPU for your box. I dropped a Powerleap 1.4GHz Celeron into my Dell XPS-T700r, along with 512 MB ram and it's purring like a kitten on its momma's teat.
