Computer Slowness

[Sprintex]

When you're using an 8 year old laptop with an ancient Celeron processor and less than 500MB of ram you don't tend to notice the forum going any slower than usual 

Paul

Stop buying those HST worms and get a new laptop

It's not the cost of a new laptop that's stopping me, it's the cost of the Dreamweaver software I'd need for Windows 7 or 8 as well so I can update my website 


Paul

[Caz]

It's not the cost of a new laptop that's the problem, it's everything else you have to update and that's exactly why I haven't updated from Win XP, I'd need new versions of my video editing software, music editing software, midi editing software plus various other things the compatibility wizard says won't work on Vista/Win7 etc.  I have max'd the memory and fitted a larger drive to my laptop but I'm really pushing it now.

[Sprintex]

Exactly, same here Caz Done all I can to this old laptop but it still struggles to cope. Have to turn off the Antivirus to watch videos or it's like very bad stop-motion animation! 


Paul

[Malc]

Hi Caz, if you upgrade to a more powerful machine, you can always use a virtual XP server to run your old software. I haven't done this in Windows 7 with XP, but I have used this to run Windows98 software on an XP machine. No reason why it shouldn't work, it is Microsoft.    HAve a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

Malc

[Caz]

Thanks Malc, sounds a bit too complicated for me, I don't do bad for an oldie, but there are limits!   

[MikeDunn]

To be honest - don't touch MS's virtualisation ... use VMWare !  Far superior.

And it's not difficult ... especially if you move to a new (and larger) disk.

[intraclast]

Hi Caz,

Another possibility if you are running out of upgrades to do might be to get a Solid State Drive (SSD) for your system drive. You don't need to get a large one, 64GB would do, as you can keep you current hard drive as as second hard disk (D:\).  With your system files, and most often used program files on a SSD you should find load times drastically reduced, it should make your system much more responsive.  You'll still be limited by the speed of your processor obviously.

I've not yet tried this myself and I'm not 100% certain of the benefits of putting one into a really old machine, but it might be worth investigating.

Mark

[EtchedPixels]

if you plan to upgrade a windows PC do it soon, much of the upcoming hardware will not run anything below windows 8 as lots of ancient compatibility stuff is on the way out and drivers will also get harder and harder to find for older windoze,

Or just run Linux :-)

[MikeDunn]

Another possibility if you are running out of upgrades to do might be to get a Solid State Drive (SSD) for your system drive. You don't need to get a large one, 64GB would do, as you can keep you current hard drive as as second hard disk (D:\). 

Been there, done that (and an E: drive too - must buy myself a new 2 or 3TB drive; running out of space again !!!).  Works fine, I get a great boot time !!!

Just one thing - never never run a defrag against SSD drives - leave 'em alone !!!
Mike

[Lawrence]

AFAIK Win7 has a compatability mode allowing you to run older software in its original form including XP (I stand to be corrected)
Win8 has I believe been designed essentially for the new range of touch screen tablets and smart phones, if you don't use one of those devices I can't see the point of it myself. 

[Agrippa]

I recently bought a new laptop with Windows 8 installed,
most of it seems to be irrelevant guff.

The Windows media player is another pain when I just want
to play a dvd or cd.

[intraclast]

... Or just run Linux :-)

EP has very good point here. If you have some older hardware and you want to extend the usable lifespan of it, stick Linux on it. A distribution like Ubuntu is usable out of the box and there is a pretty good help community for the things you get stuck on. Obviously you will not be able to run your Windows software, although quite a lot of programs will run under WINE (a windows emulator for Linux). Linux doesn't suffer from the sort of bloat that Windows does and an old bit of hardware will run much better on it. If you just need it for browsing the internet and word processing etc (on Libre office, a free alternative to Microsoft's) then you can get an extra few years out of your computer/laptop.

Mark

[Sprintex]

... Or just run Linux :-)

EP has very good point here.

. . . IF you have the knowhow to work such things! I'm not completely computer-ignorant, I can usually sort most basic problems to do with settings, running new hardware, etc, but I wouldn't know where to start with running things to run other things on, or substituting parts of the Windows OS, and frankly I'd rather not tamper with such things for fear of permanently mucking something up! 


Paul

[EtchedPixels]

. . . IF you have the knowhow to work such things! I'm not completely computer-ignorant, I can usually sort most basic problems to do with settings, running new hardware, etc, but I wouldn't know where to start with running things to run other things on, or substituting parts of the Windows OS, and frankly I'd rather not tamper with such things for fear of permanently mucking something up! 


Paul

Wouldn't worry. Chromebook is Linux, Android is Linux .. we'll get you in the end 

[red_death]

It's not the cost of a new laptop that's stopping me, it's the cost of the Dreamweaver software I'd need for Windows 7 or 8 as well so I can update my website 

Hi Paul

The solution is ditch Dreamweaver! Plenty of (free) alternatives if you need a WYSIWYG html editor, or even better hand code (CSS and includes for headers/footers/menus etc makes adminstering sites very easy).

Cheers, Mike