Most Windows 7 PCs max out memory.

whs said:

But here the problem is mechanical. When the bus hits a bump, the heads of the disk retract to avoid a head crash. Maybe putting the laptop on a pillow may help (if that does not impede the cooling too much - e.g. if the vents are towards the side). But the flash drive option is a good alternative - even a large SD card (that does not stick out on the side and cannot break).

Exactly. The good thing about it is a mechanical HDD also can function as a gyroscope that can detect even the slightest motion. What I would like to see is an adjustable read/write buffer that increases when the HDD senses the laptop is in motion. It only takes a few seconds for it to read 500 MB, for example, and transfer that to memory. So how could I get windows to use some of the 4 GB of idle RAM (on average) as a secondary read/write cache?

As I said, use a 4GB SD card - problem solved.

I have a laptop and watch movies on it all the time and the laptop sits between me and my wife on the bed, I pick it up at least 10 times during the movie and have NO skips or delays at all. Sounds very strange that your laptop has this issue to me. Just last night the dog jumped on the bed and seriously hit the laptop to the point I was worried about a head crash and the laptop seems fine today and the movie didn't pause or skip even for .5 sec.

Could it be the HDD and not the system at all?

granted I could be destroying my HDD but I am constantly using my laptop like a media desktop converting VHS movies into DVD and taking my DVD's into digital format for my WD media TV.

macgyver2 said:

I have a laptop and watch movies on it all the time and the laptop sits between me and my wife on the bed, I pick it up at least 10 times during the movie and have NO skips or delays at all. Sounds very strange that your laptop has this issue to me. Just last night the dog jumped on the bed and seriously hit the laptop to the point I was worried about a head crash and the laptop seems fine today and the movie didn't pause or skip even for .5 sec.

Could it be the HDD and not the system at all?

granted I could be destroying my HDD but I am constantly using my laptop like a media desktop converting VHS movies into DVD and taking my DVD's into digital format for my WD media TV.

There are HDDs with and without retractable heads. My guess would be that your heads do not retract.

will look it up, I have 2 of these drives and one is in a USB case from HP

Getting a bit OT here

You laptop might have jitter-correction controls in your BIOS or with software for controlling that problem, I know Sony laptops come with some form of it

well can't find the info and will post it in my specs if anyone's interrested. As for the RAM part I did have something to say about that.

I use computer status to monitor most aspects of my laptop and it tells me 2.6GB is used out of 4 or is that telling me that's what I have avail? cause resource monitor says I am using 1.7

resource monitor says I am using 1.7

I would only go by what resource monitor says. But 1.7 of 4.0 is a lot. I usually run around 1.0 (for everything except the blue part).

I have 4 sidebar apps running, NIS, firefox, yahoo IM, core temp my mouse software and I have areo on and those are the apps I can see.