Can my 5yr old laptop handle an HD camcorder?

[paulcollins10]

I've been looking into the Canon HF100/10 and Panasonic SD9 for over 2 months now and i'm closing in on making a decision but i 'm really not sure if i'm "punching above my weight" with one of these camcorders as i'm not sure if my laptop can handle the editing and even viewing.

I notice on other threads people provide statistics of their computers in terms of what they're capable of and people post back whether they think it'd be up to the job.
Problem is i'm not technically minded and not sure where i even start and what stats i could provide and where i would find these onmy laptop.

Could anyone help and then please decide whether i could handle one of these camcorders.

Thanks very much

[senu]

Unless your 5 year old camcorder has a dual core processor with 2Gb RAm and a decent graphics card . I wouldn't bother. relying on it
That doesn't men you shouldn't get the camcorders but don't expect to do much with the down loaded footage without getting newer hardware

Some Pentium D models are not last years but certainly Core2 Duo or even quad core with a lot of Ram in a fairly speedy system will be obligatory
Some Dual core AMD processor PCs seem able too
Why not download some HD clips and playback for starters and see
I appreciate you arent " techie" but you will need to be ( a little) for Software to handle AVCHD and how to edit and output it

[raymallon]

I have a Fujitsu Siemens A1650 laptop. 1.2gb and an AMD Athlon 64 chip.

Am I correct in assuming that this is REALLY going to struggle?

[senu]

Originally Posted by raymallon

I have a Fujitsu Siemens A1650 laptop. 1.2gb and an AMD Athlon 64 chip.

Am I correct in assuming that this is REALLY going to struggle?

Although the processor power is paramount, the amount of RAM and graphics card count as in general it is the overall system performance that decided ho easy you find things
In general Dual core and Cor2 DFuo systems are better than single core and certainly Quad core even better
As such if your Laptop is a single core processor PC it may struggle but why not get some sample footage off the internet and try it on your PC?