Freshmen Laptop Review
What you should know
Andrew Scagnelli
Issue date: 7/18/08 Section: Campus Life
The incoming freshmen will be receiving a new laptop upon their arrival at Stevens. Like the past few years, the laptop will be the latest revision of the Hewlett-Packard-branded Compaq 8510w. While this review won't be going into the hardware specifics, they are available through the Stevens Computer Service Center's website at http://www.stevens.edu/csc/.
The laptop is more than perfectly capable for basic computing tasks. Thanks to built-in wireless capability, internet access is available from almost anywhere on campus. Web browsing is breezy, with the largest lag in downloading data, rather than drawing the website. A few Flash-based game from the website Kongregate ran without issue in the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (v3.0.1), and videos from YouTube played without skipping and a proper loading time for a wireless connection.
In terms of office tasks, Microsoft Office 2007 is provided, and again runs without issue. The only time the system began to drag was when formatting larger documents or running complex spreadsheet macros.
No tests using CAD tools, such as SolidWorks or AutoCAD, were done, but based on gaming performance, the laptop should have no issues.
The laptop's screen is very nice and very high-end. It is capable of playing back 1080p video, and there was no visible stutter while watching 720p video. It is also equipped with a Blu-Ray drive, but this could not be tested due to a lack of Blu-Ray discs and requisite player.
In order to fully stress the computer, two tests were done. The first test stressed the entire system, the games Crysis and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, two visually demanding games, were played through their first levels while looking for stuttering that would detract from gameplay. STALKER worked fine, although Crysis began to stutter about halfway through, although the problem dissipated after restarting the game.
The second test was to convert a 720p video for playback on an iPhone. Video conversion stresses the CPU significantly, although the dual-core processor will significantly speed the process. The 192 MB video file, lasting approximately 15 minutes, was converted in a breezy 8 minutes 55 seconds on "Normal" CPU priority, boding very well for any aspiring directors.
The laptop is more than perfectly capable for basic computing tasks. Thanks to built-in wireless capability, internet access is available from almost anywhere on campus. Web browsing is breezy, with the largest lag in downloading data, rather than drawing the website. A few Flash-based game from the website Kongregate ran without issue in the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (v3.0.1), and videos from YouTube played without skipping and a proper loading time for a wireless connection.
In terms of office tasks, Microsoft Office 2007 is provided, and again runs without issue. The only time the system began to drag was when formatting larger documents or running complex spreadsheet macros.
No tests using CAD tools, such as SolidWorks or AutoCAD, were done, but based on gaming performance, the laptop should have no issues.
The laptop's screen is very nice and very high-end. It is capable of playing back 1080p video, and there was no visible stutter while watching 720p video. It is also equipped with a Blu-Ray drive, but this could not be tested due to a lack of Blu-Ray discs and requisite player.
In order to fully stress the computer, two tests were done. The first test stressed the entire system, the games Crysis and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, two visually demanding games, were played through their first levels while looking for stuttering that would detract from gameplay. STALKER worked fine, although Crysis began to stutter about halfway through, although the problem dissipated after restarting the game.
The second test was to convert a 720p video for playback on an iPhone. Video conversion stresses the CPU significantly, although the dual-core processor will significantly speed the process. The 192 MB video file, lasting approximately 15 minutes, was converted in a breezy 8 minutes 55 seconds on "Normal" CPU priority, boding very well for any aspiring directors.