Any ways to make this laptop faster?

  • Thread starter kennylmao
  • 15 comments
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kennylmao

kennylmao

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Chad
Chad
kennylmao
Hi guys,

My mom has been complaining about her laptop being slow so I thought I'd ask the experts here for a possible solution to make it somewhat faster.

Here are the specs.

I was thinking it could possibly be slow from having a combination of:
a mere 1.6GHz processor,
only 2GBs of RAM,
plus a whopping 1TB hard drive.

I think I remember reading somewhere that a large hard drive could slow down your computer if your computer only has enough RAM for basic processes, correct me if I'm wrong on that.

So, I was thinking of upgrading the RAM to 4GBs but I'm not sure if it would make any difference at all.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

Question about my own problems:
How often do I have to change the thermal paste and clean out the dust on my laptop?

I have it for about a year and a half now and it has been running kind of hot lately. I'd open it up and clean the dust myself, but after googling for a guide, dismantling an HP Pavillion G4 has been harder than I thought. :ouch:

Should I just take it to the shop and ask them to clean out the dust + change the thermal paste?
 
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What operating system and how old is it? Also, in task manager, how many processes show up running?
 
You could upgrade the RAM, you could also replace the HDD for an SSD, but I'd personally save my money for an entirely new laptop. 1.6GHz, even in an AMD quad core, is alarmingly slow for 2013.

Disclaimer: Not an expert.
 
Pako
What operating system and how old is it? Also, in task manager, how many processes show up running?
Click to expand...
Windows 8 and about 2 months old. Running processes: 4 Apps, 52 Background processes, 25 Windows processes. :scared:
neema_t
You could upgrade the RAM, you could also replace the HDD for an SSD, but I'd personally save my money for an entirely new laptop. 1.6GHz, even in an AMD quad core, is alarmingly slow for 2013.

Disclaimer: Not an expert.
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks. :)
 
Retailers should be shot for selling a modern computer with only 2gb of ram. Yes, upgrade ram and google windows 8 performance optimizations to try and knock down system load.

And yes, a SSD that is performance minded would also help. They are costly for the larger ones. Check out Intel's 520 series.
 
nick09
Just upgrade the ram to 4GB and you'll be good.
Click to expand...
Okay, thanks. :)
Pako
Retailers should be shot for selling a modern computer with only 2gb of ram. Yes, upgrade ram and google windows 8 performance optimizations to try and knock down system load.

And yes, a SSD that is performance minded would also help. They are costly for the larger one. Check out Intel's 520 series.
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks. I guess I'm safe to upgrade the RAM tomorrow then. :)
 
Don't dismantle it - may void your warranty and cause more issues.

One thing I can suggest to help is to check what programs are coming on at start-up - this can reduce boot up times.

Start > search for "System Configuration" > "Startup" tab, and see what programs you have running.

Also have you defragmented your hard drive of late?
 
Furinkazen
Don't dismantle it - may void your warranty and cause more issues.

One thing I can suggest to help is to check what programs are coming on at start-up - this can reduce boot up times.

Start > search for "System Configuration" > "Startup" tab, and see what programs you have running.

Also have you defragmented your hard drive of late?
Click to expand...

Good idea, I'll do that and see how it works. 👍
 
^ :lol:

Mint would be fine!

I'm surprised that it is so under powered. It almost seems like a very old laptop that has had Windows 8 installed on it and been resold.

You say it has a 1.6Ghz cpu, do you know what model it is?
 
Lubuntu runs LXDE as standard and being Ubuntu based it is user friendly.

Installing Linux would be an upgrade over windows 8 anyway.

Microsoft have admitted Windows 8 is a failure and they blame OEMs for it.
 
DQuaN
^ :lol:

Mint would be fine!

I'm surprised that it is so under powered. It almost seems like a very old laptop that has had Windows 8 installed on it and been resold.

You say it has a 1.6Ghz cpu, do you know what model it is?
Click to expand...

It's a quad core A8 APU.
 
Grayfox
And AMD quadcore.

that is like an intel core 2 duo.
Click to expand...

As if. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo and anything. ANYTHING. Is better than that. Don't bash on AMD for trying out a different way of creating CPUs. It works for those who aren't interesting in processing a metric ****ton of video and just want to browse the internet. As an added bonus to the A-Series APU's they have a decent video processing unit which lends them to having sometimes better video performance than the competing quad core processor from Intel(at least when they came out).

The problem with the laptop is the RAM. I don't understand how you can get away selling a computer with less than 4GB anymore. It's just stupid.
 
Okay, so I went and installed a piece of 4GB which makes a total of 6GBs of RAM on my mom's laptop. That's more than what I have. :grumpy: :lol:

Opening folders which used to take at least five seconds is considerably much quicker now.

Thanks for all the help guys. :) 👍
 

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