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Upgrades That Work, Upgrades That Don't - PART 1: Acrobat 7, Notebook Computers, and 64-bit Windows
January 2006
Converting your office to an Adobe Acrobat-based system places heavy demands upon computing performance, particularly when printing and when rendering scanned documents into a text-searchable format.
I did not buy any new computer systems in 2005 but I did upgrade my entire office to state-of-the-art performance by progressively and inexpensively upgrading existing systems, replacing underperforming parts as needed. In doing so, I found that most upgrades worked well, some were highly worthwhile, but some were simply not worth the effort. The prices quoted below are material and program costs only - I do all of my own hardware and software upgrades. If you do not have the requisite experience to do these upgrades yourself, then you will also need to factor in the cost of a competent technician’s time.
Adobe Acrobat Professional Version 7 has enough new and improved features that improve productivity that I could not justify failing to upgrade all computers immediately to Professional Version 7. Clerical productivity, particularly when scanning, was substantially improved. However, the initial version of Acrobat Professional 7 had some significant performance-sapping glitches that were quickly rectified by the ensuing free upgrades to version 7.0 .5. Be sure that you enable Acrobat’s automatic upgrade feature and install those upgrades. I’ve found that they substantially improved the performance of the initially shipping product. However, Acrobat Professional Version 7 does place some heavier demands upon hardware, particularly when using the default scanning procedure which makes any scanned documents automatically text-searchable. In a classic ripple effect example, I found that I needed to upgrade the performance of my office computers in order. More on that below. This was a highly worthwhile upgrade costing about $150 per upgraded prior Acrobat license.
Upgrading existing notebook computers: I do all of my in-court presentations with a Toshiba 2.4 GHz A10 notebook computer that I acquired in late 2003. The Toshiba seemed unnecessarily slow on occasion, something that I related back to its very slow 4200 rpm hard disk. CPU and memory performance was more than adequate. Hitachi’s 7200 rpm notebook hard disk series is now in its second generation and is very fast compared to all other notebook hard disks. It produces no more heat and consumes no more power than run-of-the-mill notebook hard disks. My Toshiba A10's overall performance was so improved that I purchasing a new, faster notebook computer made no sense at all. Installing a new Hitachi 7200 rpm hard disk in my existing Toshiba A10 notebook computer was a highly worthwhile upgrade that brought my existing notebook computer up to near state of the art performance. A upgrading to a demonstrably faster hard disk is still among the best ways of improving overall computer performance.
I copied a complete drive image of my old 40 GB notebook hard disk on to a new 80 GB Hitachi 7200 rpm drive using Acronis True-Image, which you can download and purchase from Acronis is a reliable and highly worthwhile hard disk upgrade tool that’s also usable for basic electronic discovery.
We also have some Fujitsu B-2130 series subnotebook computers, which travel very well because they have excellent TFT screens and are small and light. Unfortunately, these Windows 2000 and Windows 98 subnotebook computers were starting to seem very outdated. New, comparable subnotebook computer cost at least $1,400 or more. Although the 400 MHz processors are slow by contemporary standards, subnotebooks are typically slower than full-size notebook computer but are fast enough for word processing, Email, basic PowerPoint slide shows, and light duty business computing while traveling light. Our mid-life upgrade program for these computers included:
- Adding 128 MB DRAM memory from Crucial, a direct sales part of top-tier memory manufacturer Micron. The Crucial web site includes a very helpful selection routine that guarantees that you will get the correct upgrade memory for your computer or printer. $55 each and definitely worthwhile. We would have added even more but the B-2130 series tops out at 192 MB.
- Upgrading the original small and very slow Fujitsu hard disks to 40 GB 5400rpm Toshiba hard disks, $90 each and definitely worthwhile. As with the Toshiba A10, I used Acronis True-Image to upgrade directly to a faster, larger new hard disk.
- Upgrading Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to Windows XP, Service Pack 2. $150 per computer and worthwhile although undoubtedly over-priced compared to the hardware upgrades. Upgrading the operating system to the most current version gave these systems a much more modern look and feel - now, the only obvious difference between these 5-7 year old systems and new subnotebook systems is their slower CPU and memory performance.
- Cleaning up the start-up routines and substituting anti-virus programs. Earlier this year, I stopped using Symantec’s Norton SystemWorks and Norton Anti-Virus because these clunky programs are simply too demanding of computing resources, particularly in marginal systems. Norton loads many megabytes of “common core” programs that sit between the operating system and your application programs. These “common core” programs use a great deal of RAM and degrade CPU performance, a serious concern with marginal hardware such as the subnotebooks that I was upgrading. For these reasons, I switched to three widely-used programs that can be purchased only over the Internet and that run faster and more stably than the Norton products:
- Ace Utilities to fix Windows Registry problems, perform general system cleanup, and selectively eliminating unnecessary performance-sapping startup processes; About $30 and highly worthwhile
- Diskeeper defragments hard disks and improves hard disk performance better than any other program that I have ever tested. About $49 and highly worthwhile. This product will do more for your overall system performance than most hardware upgrades.
- Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus is a highly regarded European product. About $49 to $59 for up to 5 computers and highly worthwhile
These subnotebook computer upgrades are an integrated overall improvement program - you’ll need to implement all of them for maximum overall benefit.
64-Bit Computing
Way back in February 2005 (that’s about four years in CPU “doggie years”), I opined that there was absolutely no reason to go to 64-bit processing quite yet. What a difference ten months has made.
Microsoft’s 64-bit Windows XP x64 edition is exceptionally stable and reliably runs nearly all programs of interest to the legal community. It looks and acts just like regular 32-bit Windows XP but requires new 64-bit system boards, CPUs and driver software for your attached devices, such as printers, scanners and other peripherals. Except for scanners, which are woefully unsupported, Microsoft provides enough device driver software to support most generic computing hardware like system boards. Windows x64 is not quite ready for your desktop, though, mostly because some important legal software such as the CaseSoft products have an incompatible installation program and because the software needed to connect document scanners with x64 Windows continues to be unavailable. Although Adobe’s PDF Distiller and PDF Printer software will not work because these programs are actually 32-bit device drivers, the remainder of Acrobat Professional 7 works quite well with Windows XP x64 Edition. Oh, and you will need 64-bit anti-virus programs as well.
These are relatively minor glitches that can be readily corrected once vendors make the effort. Most new CPUs include 64 bit capability, so almost all new hardware inherently includes 64 bit capability. Microsoft now claims that, within a year, they will be making a major transition to next generation 64-bit operating systems. In the meantime, should you make the transition now? If you are not currently scanning documents into Adobe Acrobat and do not use CaseSoft products, then 64-bit Windows would work stably and efficiently on your desktop. For most of us, though, these limitations are still a bit too high to make 64-bit Windows XP x64 Edition usable at this time. For once, these limitations result from lagging third party vendors rather than any failing by Microsoft, AMD, Intel or system board vendors.
In the meantime, 64-bit Windows makes a really good operating system for any central computer storing files for other Windows XP computers in a small office peer to peer network. In fact, it may be just about the most economical and stable operating system for a small office peer to peer network file server. That actually makes a lot of sense because, when I checked further, I found that the underlying software appears to be derived from Microsoft’s highly regarded 64-bit network operating system Advanced Server 2003.
The Verdict: Highly worthwhile immediately as the basis for a new network file server. Not quite ready for desktop prime time, at least until some third party vendors make the transition and catch up.
Desktop System Upgrades:
In that same February 2005 LPT article, I also opined that an Athlon XP 2800+ was all of the CPU that you needed and that 64-bit computing was not yet here. At that time, more expensive 32-bit processors did not provide commensurately better performance and 64 bit processors ( a product niche then owned exclusively by AMD) were still somewhat immature and costly. Again, what a difference in 10 months.
Many new, high performance low cost CPUs were released in 2005 and, by the end of the year, were quite reasonably priced. Because Acrobat Professional Version 7 requires a lot of computing horsepower, we decided to upgrade our existing office systems to reduce the time wasted while waiting for Acrobat to complete lengthy tasks on 500 page discovery documents. Because this systems already included Western Digital 10,000 prm Raptor hard disks, still the fastest hard drives in the consumer market niche, we simply replaced the CPUs and in some instances the system boards and DDR memory. By mid-2005, all new AMD CPUs were 64-bit processor while many of Intel’s mid-range and upper end processors were also 64-bit capable.
AMD’s Sempron 2600+ was one of the first AMD processors using the new “ Palermo” core and cost only aboutr $65. While its stock speed was quite unimpressive, it easily and stably over-clocked to reach nearly the performance level of an expensive AMD Athlon64 3500+ CPU. We used a DFI LAN Party NF3 250gb system board, experimenting until we found the highest stable performance level. This made an excellent and inexpensive upgrade for the clerical computers and is very worthwhile. If you are interested, you can find many good articles that take you step by step through the overclocking process. AMD’s 64-bit processors generally have a great reserve of unused performance capability but require system boards that are optimized for speeds above the norm. Be aware that AMD will not honor their warranty if you overclock a CPU. On the other hand, I have never had a 64-bit AMD processor fail, even when substantially and continuously overclocked for many months. These chips run that cool, as contrasted with Intel’s miniature heat generators.
The newest Semprons are all 64-bit capable and are an inexpensive entree to 64 bit computing. The clerical staff really appreciated the performance improvement when stepping from an Athlon XP 2800+ to the overclocked Semprons. AMD’s Athlon64 2800+ is no longer made but it overclocked even better than the Sempron. I use it at home and have absolutely no complaints about performance. If you attempted to overclock any of AMD’s Socket 754 64-bit processors, then I strongly recommend that you use the DFI LAN Party NF3 250gb system board, which is highly worthwhile and generally acknowledged as the best Socket 754 system board, even if a little more expensive. A single 512MB DDR memory module is best here. Try to get the best and fastest DDR memory that you can economically justify. Ultimate memory performance substantially affects the degree to which to get the most out of these CPUs.
I also installed an AMD Athlon64 3500+ on the computer which we use to produce exhibits. Most of the newer AMD processors use the Socket 939 configuration which, in turn, will be supplanted on the high end sometime in 2006. This processor runs stably and turns in consistently solid performance. Because it is already running at a relatively high frequency out of the box, it does not overclock quite as much proportionately. The Athlon64 3500+ series is a solid economical choice for a mid-range system and is definitely worthwhile. I use mine in an MSI-7125 Neo-4 Platinum system board. This is a really excellent board that is rock solid and easily overclocks Socket 939 AMD processors. Highly worthwhile. It is easy to set up and has all of the appropriate bells and whistles. I expected better from ASUS A8N-E system board in terms of stable overclocking. It performs reliably but setup was more erratic than with the MSI-7125. I picked this system board because it was certified to work with AMD’s Athlon 64 x2 3800+ dual core processor.
Dual core processors are now all the rage. Both AMD and Intel have complete product lines. While we will not really see the full benefit until the next generation of Windows programs that fully utilize their parallel processing power, dual core CPUs are now quite inexpensive and provide a useful performance increment. Intel’s least expensive dual core processors cost less than AMD’s but AMD’s design is generally considered to be faster and technologically superior. I did a simply drop-in upgrade, merely switching an AMD Athlon64 x2 dual core processor for my older Athlon64 3500+ single core CPU. Windows XP automatically recognized that a dual core processor had been installed and correctly reconfigured itself. Because I had already ascertained that the BIOS of my new ASUS system board was new enough to recognize this CPU, I did not need to alter the system board configuration in any way. Later, I did tinker with the overclocking BIOS settings and found that this Athlon62 x2 3800+ CPU could be stably over-clocked to the point that its performance equalled that of the much more expensive x2 4600+ chip. Some programs, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 also recognized the existence of a dual core processor and responded accordingly. Multi-tasking performance increased noticeably. This drop-in $320 upgrade was an extremely worthwhile upgrade. Given the minimal price difference between single core and dual core CPUs, I’ll never buy another single core processor for a mid-range or upper level computer.
Next month, I’ll discuss some 2005 peripheral upgrades, including color laser printers, wireless keyboards, LCD monitors, and 13x19 photo grade exhibit printers.