600E Last Breath - some questions

[DJ UDX]

Just now I am using my thinkpad 600E that has been left aside for some time. Works fine and is in all good shape except for the USB port where the I guess we can call it main piece has broken off so now it looks like fork when looking at it. Occasionaly it works if contact is good.

Either way though that is not my concern but rather I wanted to talk about video. All I have are 2 Megabytes of Video Ram (Neo Magic) and according to other websites, though desireable, it is not possible to upgrade the video card?

I would be fine with 800x600 (since at that resolution 24-bit color is available) but using that resolution for some reason disables directdraw. When you watch mpeg videos (videocd for example) it is extremely slow when maximized at that resolution yet 1024x768 at 16-bit will play them fine.

Is there a driver fix for this?

What I like about this thinkpad is that I haven't seen yet a notebook with such a nice screen (warm + high contrast - looks great for video color tweaking), or I have yet to find one.

Hence my video concerns.

Also, since it's only 300 Mhz with 2 megabytes of video ram there is no way also to get a good dvd playback? (There was a DELL model, I believe Inspiron 7000, also 300 Pentium 2, with ATI card, but it also had a hardware decoder for DVD - Luxonor MPEG-2 Decoder but it only worked with the OEM dvd player, Power DVD never figured it out). EDIT: I forgot to say that DVD picture quality was excellent, though very pale due to poorly tweaked screen (it was pale just in general), but watching VCDs or DVDs was really some experience with that laptop.

Lastly, if by any chance I get a hold of MPEG-2 PCMCIA decoder cards would this help with DVD playback (I would expect the DVD Picture to be routed to Thinkpad's LCD, not external monitor - is that also possible?)

Thanks,

UDX

[AlphaKilo470]

An MPEG decoder will definitley help playback and many even add some extra video RAM to your system. As for video playback, 16-bit color is the reccomended setting as 24-bit setting, without an MPEG decoder hardware solution, seems to be too much for the 2.5mb NeoMagic chip to handle. I have my 400mhz 600E set to 1024x768x16-bit color and DVDs playback just fine with minor skipping at the start of some DVDs and image quality is pretty good despite the 16-bit color setting.

How fast is your 600E's CPU, how much RAM do you have installed and what operating system do you have? In my experience, Windows XP SP2 w/ at least 128mb RAM and a 366mhz CPU or better is ideal for multimedia though Windows 98 is also pretty good with multimedia. The one OS I would not reccomend for multimedia is Windows 2000 as it just doesn't seem to be able to handle DVDs without a hardware solution.

[DJ UDX]

Oh yeah, I just upgraded it to 224 Megs of RAM by gathering bits and pieces from other computers. Good to have three slots total (well one is on board + two extra). So yes even XP runs fine with this 2 megabytes of video and 224 Ram as it is right now (so far I can tell it feels like a good Pentium 3 with 256 RAM; ok I am exaggerating a bit).

My Thinkpad runs only 300 Mhz processor and I really don't feel like upgrading it. I decided to order MARGI DVD VIDEO to go instead and see how would that function with it as it is. I am expecting it would work since it is supported on 98 and 2000 OS'es which I do preffer over XP regardless.

I wish I had time to actually see some of these laptops first hand and then see how the screen feels like when looking at it directly as opposed to screenshots and contrast ratio numbers and grab that laptop of the shelf right away.

[strikeback03]

My T43 with the Flexview display is worlds better than my 600E was. I can do photo editing on this one, no chance of that with the 600E (both due to speed and screen). I had the 366mhz processor and 288 MB RAM (with 1 dead slot). Never tried to watch DVDs, and only used Win 98 and 2000 on it, never XP. MPEG movies were fine though.