Compaq Armada 7350 Performance

[TonyMan]

We all moan at work that our laptops are no good for todays apps, especially since our intranet sites are all convering to Java Apps. The laptops are 166mhz with 48 meg of memory, and just about come to a standstill many times a day. It takes 30-60 seconds to open Outlook & 20-25 seconds for Excel. I decided to look at system monitor to poke around & have a question. Does Available Memory refer to actual physical memory available. After boot up I show anything from 5 - 11meg. Opening Outlook drops it to about 1 - 3.8 meg. If I open IE or just about anything else it goes down to around 200k. Any new apps take forever to open while the drive grinds away. My suspicion is that RAM is pretty well used & we are running everything using swapfile. I would like to approach my boss about more memory (new laptops are out of the question), but want to make sure I have interpreted the results properly.

Would also appreciate any other measurements to use. I've got Norton Utilities, but they really frown upon us installing things like that.

Thanks

[Nathan]

I'm at a Compaq shop myself. Some 400+ machines we support with the 95 client installed on them. While I can tolerate the desktops/towers, the Armadas are just a pain in the ****. They are sluggish, graphics are slow, etc. When we upgrade them to 64 MB, it helps out some, but nothing to get excited about too much. Setting the swap file to permanent helps some too.

It seems they really lag behind alot. Say the laptop is a 200MHZ. It acts like a 133 or so doesn't it? Of course most laptops are like that anyway. It was really surprised at the 333MHZ. I really expected a lot more performance.

Here are some thoughts for you.

1. What size are the clusters? If they are 4K, try changing them to 8K. You can get a noticeable improvement.

2. Is this an NT or Novell Client shop?

3. What version of Windows are you using?

4. Do you have smartdrv.exe renamed or deleted from the hard drive? It can be in the Windows directory or in the Realmode directory (if you have one).

5. Are these on docking stations? Does the performance increase when you take them off?

6. Do you have all the patches installed?

7. The laptops I prefer are the Toshiba's. No wheres near the headaches. So maybe in the future... However those Toshiba's are on back order too. So maybe that says something good about that machine too. So many want it because it's a good computer.

Sorry for all the questions. But I think you know why I'm asking them now. The 1592's are really a BIG headache. The 1750's are a little better, but... The 7350's are in the same category too, in my opinion.

If you wish, post your e-mail address and we can communicate with each other at work there. I would prefer to answer these questions publicly so all can learn from it.

[This message has been edited by Nathan (edited 10-08-99).]

[TonyMan]

I take it that your swap file comments means to manage it my self, not let Windows. Whenever I try that it results in fatal exception errors involving VMM. The help desk says this is common & have us let Windows manage it. They have a couple of thousand machines to support, so I kinda respect their wishes.

AS for your qustions:

1. Nort sure, but we are using FAT 32.

2. NT

3. Win95 4.00.950B

4. It's in the Windows directory.

5. No docking station involved.

6. Not sure about patches. Again, I don't want to run too afoul of the helpdesk people.

[Nathan]

I've heard some strange things from help desks before, so this one doesn't surprise me either. We set the swap files at about 120 MB both minimum & maximum. If they are set correctly and you get that error message, then there is something else wrong in windows. I've only setup this setting on a few thousands computers with virtually (sorry, a little dry humor there) NO problems.

Sounds like their are bigger problems there. That is my option based on my experiences. Maybe you should ask them why the machines are so slow and let them do the research to solve the problems. That way you don't get get caught in the middle. Sounds like you are just a nice guy trying to help.

[This message has been edited by Nathan (edited 10-11-99).]

[TonyMan]

Not sure how nice a guy I am, but yeah, I try not to cause them too much grief. I manage four PCs for my family that I built & always mamage my swap file as most of my friends do. No one has ever been able to explain the problem, they just say it cause errors & I've always been suspicious of why. I know the folks at top have kluged a few things that don't make a lot of sende to me. For instance, they have IE pointing towards an internal site at startup & even if you change it, it's back on the next boot up.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. I think we just have wait & see if they ever upgrade us to new machines.