Birthday coming up and just got BT Infinity working at home with about 30 Mbits/s but fairly crummy exisitng laptops seem to struggle with processing of the iplayer HD stream.

What processor, OS and memory is min spec for this task?

No minimum spec for 30MB broadband as this is just a line speed. You would advantage from N wireless though if you are connected wirelessly and have an N router as G is limited to 54MBPS and this is both ways so you could easily bottle neck the connection through your wireless. Try connecting via ethernet and see if this improves things.

I wouldn't be surprised that BT traffic shape BBC iPlayer so you don't get the full bandwidth on it. I can just about watch BBC HD on my 5MB line with the odd stutter and this is over wireless.

You haven't stated the spec of your laptop - it would be helpful to recommend upgrades etc but I would suggest at least 2GB of RAM and an Intel C2D processor.

30Mb is nothing to any computer. Most network cards have been running 100Mb for the last 10 years.

Processing video for iPlayer etc needs a bit more horsepower but nothing that the most basic laptop can't do now.

Set your budget and then look for the best laptop you can get for it. 2b minimum as mentioned is really needed for Windows 7, I'd also suggest avoiding Intel's Celeron processors they tent to be a bit hobbled.

BT do restrict iPlayer bandwidth but I think that is only on their basic package. I'm on that and tbh I rarely notice any issues.

My 1.2ghz dual core Celeron netbook with 2gb RAM and 7 Professional seems to stream HD video well enough. 1080p on youtube is a bit jittery mind you.

No minimum spec for 30MB broadband as this is just a line speed. You would advantage from N wireless though if you are connected wirelessly and have an N router as G is limited to 54MBPS and this is both ways so you could easily bottle neck the connection through your wireless. Try connecting via ethernet and see if this improves things.

I wouldn't be surprised that BT traffic shape BBC iPlayer so you don't get the full bandwidth on it. I can just about watch BBC HD on my 5MB line with the odd stutter and this is over wireless.

You haven't stated the spec of your laptop - it would be helpful to recommend upgrades etc but I would suggest at least 2GB of RAM and an Intel C2D processor.

Thanks. I have two broadbands on a BT type 2 Hub and a Type 3 hub, the Infinity on the BT type 3 Home Hub. The BT Engineer measured it at 37 Mbits/s. Both these hubs are N type 300 Mbit\s. We do have 5 people at a time on the broadbands sometimes.

Was going to buy a laptop, wanted a 17 inch and thought I might get a clearance one from Argos. £350 HP dual core 1.86 Mz, 3 Gb of RAM I think DDR3. Other dual cores seem to hesitate and Task Manager showing processor up round 70-100 % often. Anti-virus etc, McFee often running hard.

Edited 5 July, 201115 yr by lol

It's not all down to processor speed.

My little netbook with it's Intel Atom N270 1.6GHZ CPU can play HD iplayer and youtube thanks to the nVidia ION graphics chip.

Phil

At a customers house the other week who just had Infinity fitted, speedtest on wireless at 25 ish MBPS. Plugged my laptop in and got 37MBPS so as JRW says a wireless N laptop would be a definite benefit.

As above.. N wireless (or wired) is a must to take advantage of Infinity.

Also for video streaming you really need a laptop that has a modern graphics chipset that will do hardware acceleration of video and flash.. as Phil said above.. for a netbook, that means Nvidia ION chipset.

Basically if your going to buy a laptop, try to ignore the pentiums, and core duos, and try to get something thats got a "i3" processor as a minimum.

If your shop-savvy and keep an eye on hotukdeals, you can get some bargains.. read the comments as they generally know what they are talking about. (like this one) http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-laptop-intel-core-i3-339-comet/971387