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DIY Forum >> Alarms, Phones, Aerials, CCTV & Datacomms >> Laptop - 2 https://www.askthetrades.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1199372930 Message started by Flashbang on Jan 3rd, 2008, 3:08pm |
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Title: Laptop - 2 Post by Flashbang on Jan 3rd, 2008, 3:08pm Hi all, and a Happy New Year to you. Right.... A few months ago I purchased a Gateway MA7 (ML6226b) laptop running Windows Vista Home basic. The processor is a Celeron M CPU 520 @1.60Ghz. It has 502Mb RAM and 945GM Express Chipset Family (whatever that is?) Now the problem is... while I know it’s a cheap (Tesco purchased) laptop, its performance is really poor! It takes ages to load a programme and some like MS Word load after a long delay (20 plus seconds) and then often when closed the OS shows an error and goes off fault finding before reporting back its unable to do anything! MS Outlook is also slow to load and it always fails to remember my password at each session despite having checked that the 'Save this password' box is ticked!! Grrrr. It only has MS Office XP suite installed, CCleaner and some printer software plus AGV antivirus. My question is, is the slowness caused by the Vista OS? If so, can you recommend anyway of speeding the darn thing up? (I've tried a defrag and CC cleaner has been used to remove all cookies etc). If I were to remove Vista and install XP as the OS do you think it would improve its operating speed?? My desktop PC, running the same programmes (and many more too) via XP as the OS is 10 times faster loading the selected programme. Cheers |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by CWatters on Jan 3rd, 2008, 8:05pm You could try adding more memory. I believe MS recommend a 1GHz processor and 1GByte RAM as a minimium for Vista. Another 512MByte shouldn't be very expensive. |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by JerryD on Jan 3rd, 2008, 8:27pm Yeah, nowhere near enough RAM and the processor is a slow one. If a computer is cheap then you can't expect it to perform like a £2,000 model. :( |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by Lectrician on Jan 3rd, 2008, 9:00pm Processor is slow by todays standards. RAM is low, but is as supplied by many desktops thesedays (the cheap ones) - Assume you mean 512. Ram is upgradeable, but can be tricky in laptops, and more often than not, has to be manufacturer compatible to the laptop (desktops are far easier!). Processors can be upgraded in desktops, but it would end up costing more than the machine usually. I do not believe you can on laptops, and if you could, it would be cheaper to get a new one! In saying all this, my old laptop here is only 1.79Ghz and 384Mb RAM. It is 4 years old now, and was cheap at the time. I use it for surfing, Microsoft Office, creating Web Sites, playing music, email (outlook) and also for connecting to other machines using Remote Desktop. I also have several bits of software for programming PBX telephone systems and alarms. I find it slower than my desktop, but not too bad to be honest. The worst thing is the start up time - around 4 mins I suppose. I usually leave it on during the day, and fairly often during the night - 4 mins is a long time! :-X I am looking to replace at some point, but do not find it too bad TBH! |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by Flashbang on Jan 4th, 2008, 12:09pm Hi all Many thanks for your replies. So, I have a processor that’s slow and can’t realistically be upgraded and RAM that’s short on memory but could be upgraded possibly! Is it worthwhile removing Vista and installing XP? Will doing this improve programme loading speeds or is it just better leave Vista and buy some more RAM????? |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by CWatters on Jan 4th, 2008, 8:02pm My computer is about 5.5 years old and it's got a 1.6GHz Athlon 1900+ and 512M RAM. Its running Win XP SP1 and takes 12-15 seconds to open MS Word the first time and about 5 seconds subsequently. Laptops can sometimes be a bit difficult when re-installing the OS because the OS may not provide all the drivers (eg for things like battery management, mouse pads etc. With luck the laptop maker has provided all this on a seperate CD. I'd try a memory upgrade first. Probably cost <£20 ($18 on the US version of ebay). |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by Flashbang on Jan 13th, 2008, 12:08pm Hi all Just to let you know I found that there were two 256Mb sticks inside when I opened the laptop up. I have now upgraded one memory stick to 1Gb and with the other stick of 256 is still in, I'm now running at 1256Mb. (Local PC shop only had one stick of 1Gb in stock until next week) The laptop loads programmes like lightning now! Really great advice. Thank you all very much. :) :) |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by Lectrician on Jan 13th, 2008, 6:31pm golden rule is to match the pair of ram cards in the machine ;-) |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by Flashbang on Jan 21st, 2008, 5:59pm Two by 1Mb RAM cards now fitted (Had to wait for the second card to arrive at shop) Machine seems to be working the same now as it did when the 1Mb and 256kb RAM cards were fitted. But of course they are now of matched size and the My Computer properties now shows 2038 MB Thanks again for all the help / advice :) :) :) |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by CWatters on Jan 23rd, 2008, 9:33am Which version of Outlook do you have? 2007?... http://help.lockergnome.com/vista/Outlook-2007-save-passwords-Vista-save-password-box-che-ftopict68446.html Says Closed down Outlook 2007. Went to C:\users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect. Delete the "Protect" folder. (or temporarily rename it OLDProtect) Restarted Windows Vista. Restarted Outlook 2007. Re-inputted all 10 passwords (this computer has 10 email accounts) Hit Send/Receive button |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by thescruff on Jan 23rd, 2008, 11:39am Or just install Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, and to hell with Outlook. ;D |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by red-robbo on Jan 24th, 2008, 10:29pm Hi, Can I give my opinion here too. Firstly, the matched pairs for memory was in the days of EDO RAM. With more modern systems SDRAM, DDR and DDR2 this is no longer necessary. With regards XP Pro, whilst MS recommend a minimum of 128Mb, its sweet spot for normal use is 512Mb. If you only have say 256Mb, by the time the OS and AV has loaded, you do not have enough memory to run applications, especially Outlook and IE7 without paging to disk - and you want to avoid that at at costs. If you plan to use MS Office 2007, the sweet spot then increases to 1Gb. With Vista, first of all it has not had a service pack release yet, so has a few undocumented features (bugs!), and is far more resource hungry than anything before it. MS recommends 1Gb minimum, but in my experience its sweet spot is 2Gb, but also places far more stress on your graphics card, thus it becomes a key component in your systems "general" performance. Cannot advise you whether to downgrade to XP or not, that is really your choice based on is the resultant performance and stability acceptable to you. There is a useful tool on the crucial memory website that will scan your system, tell you what is in there and offer you upgrade options. It will also tell you if it is Vista ready or not. Hope this helps. red-robbo :) |
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Title: Re: Laptop - 2 Post by plugwash on Mar 2nd, 2008, 10:45pm Lectrician wrote on Jan 3rd, 2008, 9:00pm:
Afaict laptop memory modules come in almost exactly the same range of types as thier desktop equivilents. In either case you have to know the type and speed you require but it is not manufacturer specific. Most laptops have the ram in a reasonablly accessible location, Quote:
Depends on the particular laptop, some have the processor socketed but many have it soldered down to the motherboard for space reasons. If it is socketed it shouldn't be that expensive to replace with a better one but may well require almost complete dismantling of the laptop. Quote:
It will enable dual channel if the machine supports it improving performance a bit but afaict it doesn't generally make that much difference. |
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