Making my netbook quicker?

I agree change to MSE or Avast although since you are using Windows use MSE as you will boot a lot faster with MSE.
 
DMGrier said:
The extra ram would only really help while using the netbook if doing a lot of multitasking. I think people sometimes forget how little ram XP uses. I remember my wifes old hp that we no longer have ran XP on 256 MB of ram, not very well but it would boot and could go online and use windows media player.

Under 30 for a boot isn't to bad I think considering the cpu and I am sure you have a 5400 rpm with a low cache HDD.

The only thing I recommend is reinstalling Windows. I tried everything that was recommended on here on to my mom's 5 year old hp laptop and it helped but I felt it was not fast enough with the hardware it had so I did a fresh install of Windows Vista with updates and drivers and it seriously helped it out noticably. The only thing I tell anyone is doing a Windows install with drivers and updates is very easy but very time consuming so make sure it is on a day you have nothing planned.
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I am currently running a SSD, so it's a little slow for that drive.

I could re-image but this is a new image so I don't really feel that it is needed.

lucasbytegenius said:
Since you're using Chrome as your browser it should definitely help.
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What do you mean by this?

Knut said:
I agree change to MSE or Avast although since you are using Windows use MSE as you will boot a lot faster with MSE.
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I'm using MSE already
 
Chrome uses a lot of RAM. 1 GB (or less than 2 GB) doesn't cut it anymore.

I suppose in your case it would be the same for crappy Firefox as well, so upgrading your RAM should help.
 
lucasbytegenius said:
Chrome uses a lot of RAM. 1 GB (or less than 2 GB) doesn't cut it anymore.

I suppose in your case it would be the same for crappy Firefox as well, so upgrading your RAM should help.
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Hmm, I've only noticed Chrome using a lot of RAM if various tabs are open, I've never had an issue with just 2-3 tabs though.

I'll be ordering my 2GB stick here soon, like I said though, this computer will be for basically editing and storing pictures on the go where my laptop would be too much of a pain to work on
 
trewyn15 said:
Hmm, I've only noticed Chrome using a lot of RAM if various tabs are open, I've never had an issue with just 2-3 tabs though.

I'll be ordering my 2GB stick here soon, like I said though, this computer will be for basically editing and storing pictures on the go where my laptop would be too much of a pain to work on
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This is because chrome opens a new process for each tab, I stopped using chrome and started using "crappy firfox" because it runs faster and uses less resources.
 
DMGrier said:
This is because chrome opens a new process for each tab, I stopped using chrome and started using "crappy firfox" because it runs faster and uses less resources.
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It definitely doesn't run faster but it sure does use less RAM. That's one of the tradeoffs of a multi-process browser though, but I think stability and speed really makes it worth using Chrome.
 
DMGrier said:
This is because chrome opens a new process for each tab, I stopped using chrome and started using "crappy firfox" because it runs faster and uses less resources.
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lucasbytegenius said:
It definitely doesn't run faster but it sure does use less RAM. That's one of the tradeoffs of a multi-process browser though, but I think stability and speed really makes it worth using Chrome.
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Right, I've noticed that also, it's for sure not faster, I haven't compared RAM though. So basically if I only keep 1-2 tabs open I should probably be fine with Chrome on my Netbook?
 
trewyn15 said:
Right, I've noticed that also, it's for sure not faster, I haven't compared RAM though. So basically if I only keep 1-2 tabs open I should probably be fine with Chrome on my Netbook?
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Yeah, but as I said more RAM will help. I think you should be fine with 3-6 tabs open max though.
 
lucasbytegenius said:
Yeah, but as I said more RAM will help. I think you should be fine with 3-6 tabs open max though.
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Sounds good, I'll probably order that next paycheck :)

Also, I'm going to go into BIOS and make sure that BIOS is booting off of the primary drive and not checking USB and such, I'll also make sure that I have a quick boot option selected if at all possible.

Any other things to potentially change in BIOS to make it faster? I know there's a way to overclock but only runs single thread programs faster, where would I possibly be able to find that in BIOS?
 
trewyn15 said:
Sounds good, I'll probably order that next paycheck :)

Also, I'm going to go into BIOS and make sure that BIOS is booting off of the primary drive and not checking USB and such, I'll also make sure that I have a quick boot option selected if at all possible.

Any other things to potentially change in BIOS to make it faster? I know there's a way to overclock but only runs single thread programs faster, where would I possibly be able to find that in BIOS?
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Yeah, setting the BIOS to only look in the primary HD for booting should make it a bit faster to start up.

As for overclocking the thing, I found this utility that might work: http://www.cpp.in/dev/eeectl/
 
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