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From: vbDavidC on 24 Nov 2009 18:30
On Nov 23, 11:23 pm, "Paul-J, Kbh" <di...(a)forum.dk.invalid> wrote:
> I am in trouble because I have promised a 10y child in my family a laptop as Christmas
> present.
> It must not be too expensive. And it must have an optical drive and a good display.
>
> I thought this D600 -which otherwise is running perfectly with a fresh updated Win XP-
> would be OK.
> The problem is playing videos such as DVD. I get poor results on Windows media player
> 11.
> Should I try other software ? Would it help to upgrade to Windows 7 ?
> There is 1,5 GB ram and an ATI radeon 9000 mobility card with Dells 4year-old driver.

I have a Latitude D600 that I have had for several years and it works
well playing DVDs with XP.

Like others have said you need some type of decoder to play movies.
When I first started using the computer I did not do a lot of
multimedia so I was not sure how to proceed to play movies so I paid
$20 for Corel's Intervideo which works great. However, later on I
found a free codec that was recommended at Lifehacker.com. Here is
the link:

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

I downloaded the standard version although I probably could have used
the basic version.

I guess I read it is a clean install of Windows XP which is a good
thing. Do install the video driver at Dell's website which is a
Mobility Radeon 9000 (I checked in my device manager). I am almost
certain that all D600 use this video adapter even though there are
different LCD panels (mine is a 1400x1050).

Regarding Windows 7 I would not install Windows 7. I am dual booting
Windows7 (free download version) and XP but only have used 7 several
times. The video adapter does not (at least back in the summer) have
a driver for Windows 7 (and Vista) and uses a default VGA which I seem
to recall might be my 1400x1050 (or something close) but for it to be
running at its optimum it would need a specific driver.

Regarding VLC (or VideoLan) I have installed that and it seems to work
well. One thing it seems to do well is the volume in that it seems to
pump up the volume. For whatever reason on my desktop I remember the
volume when playing a DVD movie was at a very low level than if I
played an MP3. For whatever reason on some of the playback I get some
distortion when I am going to a different part of the movie for a
second or 2.

I like playing back with Windows player because I like the slider bar
to quickly move to a specific part of the movie.

K-Lite comes with Media player classic which when you install K-Lite I
think becomes the default viewer although it is easy to change. The
last time I installed the software I left it as the default player and
have been using it. It works well.

If you did a clean install of Windows XP I would make sure to install
the Dell Quickset software which displays a volume control and may
make your volume buttons right below your LCD screen work better or at
least display a volume window which is pretty neat.
From: vbDavidC on 24 Nov 2009 18:37
On Nov 23, 11:23 pm, "Paul-J, Kbh" <di...(a)forum.dk.invalid> wrote:
> I am in trouble because I have promised a 10y child in my family a laptop as Christmas
> present.
> It must not be too expensive. And it must have an optical drive and a good display.
>
> I thought this D600 -which otherwise is running perfectly with a fresh updated Win XP-
> would be OK.
> The problem is playing videos such as DVD. I get poor results on Windows media player
> 11.
> Should I try other software ? Would it help to upgrade to Windows 7 ?
> There is 1,5 GB ram and an ATI radeon 9000 mobility card with Dells 4year-old driver.

I just noticed you mentioned that you have the Dell driver installed
so you should be in good shape.

Besides the other stuff we mentioned I would verify you are not
running too many additional apps as well that might be slowing you
down. Something like an anti-virus. I would go to the task manager
and make sure no other tasks are taking a major portion of your CPU.
I know with my computer if I am on a website that is using Adobe Flash
which can be a resource hog it definitely does not help if I were
trying to play a DVD. I don't know why exactly but some websites
using Flash take up a lot of the CPU while others it does has an
effect but is bearable.
From: vbDavidC on 26 Nov 2009 23:28
On Nov 23, 11:23 pm, "Paul-J, Kbh" <di...(a)forum.dk.invalid> wrote:
> I am in trouble because I have promised a 10y child in my family a laptop as Christmas
> present.
> It must not be too expensive. And it must have an optical drive and a good display.
>
> I thought this D600 -which otherwise is running perfectly with a fresh updated Win XP-
> would be OK.
> The problem is playing videos such as DVD. I get poor results on Windows media player
> 11.
> Should I try other software ? Would it help to upgrade to Windows 7 ?
> There is 1,5 GB ram and an ATI radeon 9000 mobility card with Dells 4year-old driver.

Paul,

I wonder what type of hard drive you are using. I don't know why you
are having problems.

I have 1GB of ram and it still works fine. I know that sometimes I
have had a spare older hard drive that I will place into a computer
and I thought I was being someone smart and frugal. But if you have
something like a 20GB hard drive with a small cache or is somewhat
slower for some reason that will also slow you down.

I think the original hard drive was a 40GB drive which I think worked
fine and upgraded to a 60GB and now a 250GB drive.
From: Paul-J, Kbh on 28 Nov 2009 09:04

"vbDavidC" <davidsusergroups(a)yahoo.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1ae1059e-e814-410e-9cc5-a333a3deba6b(a)w19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
Paul,
I wonder what type of hard drive you are using. I don't know why you
are having problems.

I have 1GB of ram and it still works fine. I know that sometimes I
have had a spare older hard drive that I will place into a computer
and I thought I was being someone smart and frugal. But if you have
something like a 20GB hard drive with a small cache or is somewhat
slower for some reason that will also slow you down.

I think the original hard drive was a 40GB drive which I think worked
fine and upgraded to a 60GB and now a 250GB drive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have done some systematic tests with a 3 min .mpg video file. (recorded TV)

On a XPS M1330 laptop : faultless playback

On D600: the playback is OK apart from one or two bumps during the 3 minutes . (by
'bumps' I mean 0.1 sec interuptions - always at the same place in the playback)
To make sure that it is not due to a weak drive, I have installed a 256MB ramdisk on
which I copy the video file.>>> Same problem as when playing from harddrive.


From: Ben Myers on 28 Nov 2009 11:30
Paul-J, Kbh wrote:
> "vbDavidC" <davidsusergroups(a)yahoo.com> skrev i en meddelelse
> news:1ae1059e-e814-410e-9cc5-a333a3deba6b(a)w19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
> Paul,
> I wonder what type of hard drive you are using. I don't know why you
> are having problems.
>
> I have 1GB of ram and it still works fine. I know that sometimes I
> have had a spare older hard drive that I will place into a computer
> and I thought I was being someone smart and frugal. But if you have
> something like a 20GB hard drive with a small cache or is somewhat
> slower for some reason that will also slow you down.
>
> I think the original hard drive was a 40GB drive which I think worked
> fine and upgraded to a 60GB and now a 250GB drive.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have done some systematic tests with a 3 min .mpg video file. (recorded TV)
>
> On a XPS M1330 laptop : faultless playback
>
> On D600: the playback is OK apart from one or two bumps during the 3 minutes . (by
> 'bumps' I mean 0.1 sec interuptions - always at the same place in the playback)
> To make sure that it is not due to a weak drive, I have installed a 256MB ramdisk on
> which I copy the video file.>>> Same problem as when playing from harddrive.
>
>

If there were "bumps" only in playback from the hard disk, another
explanation would be excessive fragmentation of the MPG being played
back. To look at fragmentation of individual files, I suggest trying
Defraggler, done with the same top-notch quality by the same people who
have given the world the handy CCleaner.

The "bumps" you have described might also be caused by running the MPG
player with too little memory. Increase the amount of system memory?

Or it could simply be that the "bumps" are caused by the use of
more-than-the-usual processor cycles to decode parts of the MPEG.

.... Ben Myers
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