What do I need to stream live sport

[deanscroft]

I am thinking of buying a netbook or compact laptop to use on holiday to watch live football in wifi zones. I could do with a bit of guidance as to what processing power and ram I will need to have to do this successfully. Most netbooks look to have an Intel Atom processor with 1gb of ram. Is this enough or should I spend a bit more to get a compact laptop? Many thanks for any help.

 

Steve

[Plastic Nev]

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

It isn't so much the capability of the netbook, more importantly is the available download speed of the WiFi zone as to how well the streaming works. The only real improvement after that is the graphics. That is installed on the motherboard, so look for a model with good graphics capability.

An extra 1GB RAM won't hurt, to finish up with 2GB but not really needed for streaming video.

However most netbooks come with Windows 7 starter installed as the operating system, look for one with Windows 7 Home Premium installed, or be prepared to buy the upgrade as the starter version is poor and I believe a little slow.

 

Nev.

[RandyL]

Hi people.

 

I can't say for sure but will offer a scenario that might equate.

 

I have an old XP I don't use that has under 1Gb of memory but it does have a decent single core processor. So yes it is under powered by Ram memory for XP.

 

It really lags when playing youtube videos while my Windows 7 computer with 8 Gb Ram and quad core does not on the same connection and at the same time both are in use.

 

I used to have 4 Gb of Ram on a Vista that streamed and played youtube fine too. Dual core.

 

My point is that I think 1 Gb or even 2 Gb is seriously under powered for videos even if the stream is of low quality with Vista or 7. For that matter under powered for most things. At one Gb Windows 7 should be able to the most basics of tasks like creating word docs etc. but for much else including surfing it's going to be slow as the OS and graphics will be using almost all of it.

 

For my latest Windows 7 laptop I opted for 8 Gb because it's for my grandson and he likes to watch videos and play basic online games without lags and buffering.

 

I only have a 6 mbs download speed and the games, streams and youtube work just fine even when he is on Xbox live so to me it seems that Ram is the main issue.

 

Just my thoughts.

[RandyL]

Just add.

 

At low Ram you can run the most basic of tasks on Windows 7 as I said. But now that you want to stream or watch videos you need more.

 

Does your streams need a player? Now you have more software running.

 

You're on the net. Your AV needs Ram to run too. More software running.

 

You're on the net. Java and Flash is running. More software running.

 

How about any office suites? More software running unless you turn it off in startup.

 

All these things and more use Ram. Opt for the most you can get.

 

In my opinion a netbook is for taking to school to take notes and sending mail. I would opt for a real computer. I hate under powered machines.

[Armageddon]

I have a old Dell 1.5 gig dual core 12.1 inch screen netbook/laptop that I dual boot with windows 7 ultimate and Pinguy OS , and the only time I get a problem with streaming is if the dongle at work is slow , the rest of my pc's/laptops are at a spec where I don't need to worry