Everybody will be wondering… Can HP Compaq Presario C749TU Notebook PC run Windows Vista? Can it run with Intel Celeron 540 1.86GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD? I am using Windows Vista Home Premium to do the test. In short, Windows Vista cannot run on this system with 512MB RAM or less. 1GB RAM and above is highly recommended. Windows Vista uses up around 600MB RAM after boot up. Some memory was used as Video memory. It uses up to 800 RAM when play movie with Media Player. It does eat a lot of memory in Windows Vista.

Processing power is another factor we have to look into. Intel Celeron 540 1.86GHz which is single core processor will not run smoothly in Windows Vista on some applications. Dual core and higher frequency CPU is highly recommended. However, it still can run most of the office application, entertainment and web browsing. No 3D gaming with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator x3100. It is way too slow to run any popular 3D games. A dedicated powerful 3D card is required.

Here are the Windows Vista base score that HP Compaq Presario C749TU Notebook PC gets…

The lowest point was contributed by Intel GMA x3100. As a result, this is definitely not a gaming platform.

I did some benchmark with PCMark Vantage and 3DMark06. It did not performance well at all. And only score 1595 PCMarks while 413 3DMarks in 3DMark06.

Here are the PCMarks benchmark details…

PCMark Memories
CPU image manipulation - 0.93 MB/s
HDD - importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery - 18.06 MB/s
Video transcoding - VC-1 to WMV9 - 0.95 MB/s

PCMark TV and Movies
Video transcoding - VC-1 to VC-1 - 0.15 MB/s
Video playback - VC-1 HD DVD with SD commentary - 11.46 FPS
HDD - Windows Media Center - 21.7 MB/s
Video playback - VC-1 HD DVD with HD content - 13.69 FPS

PCMark Gaming
Data decompression - 350.02 MB/s
GPU gaming - 0.61 FPS
CPU gaming - 2199.24 Operations/s
HDD - gaming - 7.32 MB/s

PCMark Music
Web page rendering - music shop - 2.47 Pages/s
Audio transcoding - MP3 to WMA - 0.14 MB/s
HDD - adding music to Windows Media Player - 3.06 MB/s
Audio transcoding - WAV to WMA lossless - 4.2 MB/s

PCMark Communications
Data encryption - CNG AES CBC - 1.17 MB/s
Data compression - 3.11 MB/s
Windows Mail - copying - 2.36 Operations/s
Web page rendering - news serial - 0.62 Pages/s
Data decryption - CNG AES CBC - 18.72 MB/s
HDD - Windows Defender - 7.33 MB/s

PCMark Productivity
Text editing - 343.71 kB/s
Windows Contacts - searching - 4085.74 Contacts/s
Windows Mail - searching - 2.76 Operations/s
Web page rendering - favorites group parallel - 0.32 Pages/s
HDD - application loading - 2.12 MB/s

As a conclusion, HP Compaq Presario C749TU Notebook PC is fine for everyday normal usage. No problem to use it to surf Internet, watch DVD (no HD please), listen to MP3, and do some office works. It is a great budget laptop.

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