Try turning off the HP Total Care Advisor and disabling Quick Launch and Startup features on the HP Touchsmart software.

Can I ask what you mean by a little choppy? Is it mainly related to DVD playback in Media Center?

Have you taken a look with Performance Monitor? You can get to it pretty easily from Task Manager. Performance Monitor can tell you if certain programs consistently hog the CPU because it keeps a "running average" as well as peak numbers.

In general, the IQ500/800 series are a mobile/desktop hybrid. Processor/chipset/graphics are mobile but the hard drive is a desktop model. So you may be seeing performance closer to what you would expect from a mobile system.

OK, an IQ816 has a T8100 with 800MhZ FSB Core2Duo and 4GB of DDR2 667, with a "cruddy" 7200 rpm Seagate 750GB Hard Drive. I know, because I was going to get one until I realized that the 500 series was more upgradeable. The 500 series has the 1066 and 800 MhZ bus, and the RAM can upgrade to 8GB (2x4GB).
I upped mine to the 25W P9500 2.53GhZ with 6MB cache, and it does everything pretty snappy now. You might want to go to the power config to make sure that your proc is running at full speed, the Power Management on this machine is run like a laptop, so you may be running at 2/3rds throttle and not know it. Mine was, and even with the T6600 it came with, the DVD playback on CyberPower DVD was just fine. Windows Media Player isn't ideal for DVD playback.
Hope this helps.
Dave

DaveTN said: Good point waverider. I was surprised to find that mine was running in "HP Recomende" power mode which is designed for a laptop on batteries. Changing to high performance mode made a big difference in performance. As a side note, I replaced my "cruddy" 7200 RPM Seagate with a slightly better one with a 32mb cache. Improved my HDD performance slightly. I was also disappointed (for myself and others with the IQ800 series) that the 500 series supports more than 4 gigs of RAM. Bummer. Although at the moment a matching pair of 4 gig SODIMMs is a bit out of reach price wise for me. David

David,

By what method did you swap the data on your HDD? I wanted to clone my entire drive as I have been doing for years on XP and earlier, this machine defies my cloning software. I'm not sure if it's the SATA drivers or lack thereof, or if it's Vista64, or if it is HP Recovery Manager, as Acronis has mentioned in it's FAQ. I also have a 640GB WD Caviar Black with the 32MB cache, but the only way to incorporate it is by using the Recovery DVD's as far as I know, so I still have my Samsung HD642JJ installed as it was from the factory. It registers a 5.9 in disk performance, but the standards are as old as Vista, so maybe on the newer Win7 rating, it would show a lower, more scalable number, and I could show, not just feel, a difference in performance.

Dave

I had troubles with disk 3 using the single layer media, and even though it said it was completed successfully, it wanted me to reinsert disk 3 and retry after the verification process. I was never able to feed it anything that it would call "done", (Sony, Verbatim DVD+R, new media, cake and individual packaging) so I've decided to do as HP intended all along, and order some backup disks as well.
As for the hard drive backup, I don't like to be down for more than the time it takes to swap in a backup HDD that will boot, so cloning is very important to me. For this reason, I am still relying on my old 2003 Toshiba A15 with my most sensitive archives, and I back up daily on an identical clone drive in a 2.5" USB 2.0 housing. Once a month, I swap the internal drive for the external, and it's been working like clockwork for me for years. Now, I must come up with some other way. Once I have a good copy of the Backup DVD's, I'll try disabling the Recovery Manager software and try to clone to the external drive again. I still believe that although that HP's resident recovery program may be part of my problem, I think that the missing SATA drivers are part of it as well. I DO have 2 copies of OEM XP still in the sealed envelopes, so I may want to see how old reliable performs without the Touchy Touch-Screen anchors weighing it down. I bought this more as a small footprint kitchen table top PC replacement with a big display than for the Touch Screen. Up till now, I deplored anyone touching my screen.

You know, this thing could use a rudimentary battery system as is found in laptops to act as a short-term UPS for emergency power outages. I live in Florida, and we experience a lot of spikes and surges as well as power outages due to T-Storms here, and I'd really like to see that as an option since it only requires a small LiOn battery to give the user enough time to shut down to avoid data loss. It runs on DC from the brick, so no power inverter would be required.
Sorry about the tangents I've managed to ricochet off into, but hopefully it's all of some use to everyone reading it.
Dave

Best thing to do with a Touchsmart.... Disable autostart on the Touchsmart applications themselves. In my experience, they're the reason my Touchsmart IQ815 ran dog-slow for the first 2 weeks I had it. As soon as I disabled those apps, I was fine.

Anybody mess around with upgrading the processor in these?