So much for multimedia?

[stadifer]

I know the Thinkpads are built for business first and fun second but I'm a bit dissapointed in performance so far. I bought the Z60t because it did offer some multimedia capability that the T60 doesn't really offer.

That was misleading... iTunes grinds my system to a HALT. I can play music but it consumes 80% of my proc. I can barely watch video via iTunes without it skipping like I'm streaming it from the internet. I checked my proc performance during video play and it's running between 95% and 100% when a video is running in iTunes. This is HORRIBLE performance.

Z60t Specs:
Windows XP Professional (SP2)
Pentium M 1.86 GHz (782MHz FSB)
RAM: 512MB
Video: Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset
Networking: IBM 11a/b/g Wireless LAN MiniPCI Express Adapter & Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
40GB HDD (Need to upgrade!)

Oh yeah... Saving a small openoffice document makes my Thinkpad consider the ramifications of the processing time.

Should I jettison all the ThinkVantage/ThinkCenter software? Any ideas would be helpful short of shutting down all my background processes (which primarily consist of the Thinkvantage Connections, AVG, Client Security and Active Protection. None of these apps seem to consume much (when iTunes is inactive I'm only using 7% processor and about 100MB of my page file).

[sugo]

Before jumping to the conclusion too soon, have you tried another software to play your music? For example, Winamp or Foobar2000?

[egibbs]

This makes no sense. I have a T42p and I watch iTunes, MPEG, and WMV video full screen with no problems. Your specs are better than mine except for the integrated graphics.

Something else is going on, that machine should be able to play video just fine. Either you have some setting set suboptimally (check overlay, acceleration, etc.) or something is running in the background that is chewing processor cycles.

Ed Gibbs

[cpascu01]

RAM: 512MB

This might be the problem. That kind of small. Also if you have a lot of background software running, your computer's performance will also suffer.

[pianowizard]

That was misleading... iTunes grinds my system to a HALT. I can play music but it consumes 80% of my proc. I can barely watch video via iTunes without it skipping like I'm streaming it from the internet.

Playing TV shows with iTunes on my T60 (which has 2GB of PC2-5300 RAM) is also impossible. Use QuickTime instead.

[stadifer]

I could use a different player but then I would have to port all the tracks from iTunes to a different format. This of course defeats the purpose of iTunes save for needing for my iPod.

*sugo - Does winamp or foobar play music purchased from the iTunes store?

I was inclined to think RAM but my system benchmarks only show me using about 30% to 40% of my existing RAM while running iTunes and playing music or video.

I guess I'll try running video outside of iTunes on Quicktime Player.

Trying to play a South Park episode via iTunes is a painful experience.

[pianowizard]

I could use a different player but then I would have to port all the tracks from iTunes to a different format.

At least for iTunes TV shows, I don't need to convert the files to a different format in order to play them in QuickTime. Remember that both iTunes and QuickTime are Apple products, so they are quite compatible.

[stadifer]

It appears even in Quicktime I'm consuming 90% or more of my processor while playing video. Although I turned off "Enable Direct3D video acceleration" in the QT control panel and the video appears to have stopped stuttering.

If I turn off AVG my processor usage drops to 70% or so while running a video. Still seems like an excessive amount.

[jkahng]

it looks like you have the intel graphics. integrated graphics use main memory as graphics memory. and since you only have 512mb main memory to start with i would say this is the bottleneck.
an upgrade in ram (i would say 1gig extra as prices are cheap) would help much with performance / cpu usage figures.

[FRiC]

Unfortunately, newer versions of iTunes is very CPU intensive. Sometimes I listen to songs with iTunes and play some simple games (Tetris clones) to kill time, whenever iTunes changes songs, my computer lags so badly I would always die in the games. I solved this by installing Winamp instead. I'm on a P-M 1.7 GHz with 2 GB RAM.

Also, being "multimedia capable" doesn't really mean anything. What does the Z series have over the T series that make them more suitable for multimedia?

[cpascu01]

What does the Z series have over the T series that make them more suitable for multimedia?

Media card reader I think...but i could be wrong...lol

[pianowizard]

Also, being "multimedia capable" doesn't really mean anything. What does the Z series have over the T series that make them more suitable for multimedia?

You have to remember that when the Z series was introduced, it was the only series with a widescreen and with a webcam option.