Hello all.I have a Dell inspiron,8600,about 6 years old,it works OK but is running slow compared to everything else.Needs more memory for the media related tasks (no gaming) I guess.Task manager tells me the CPU is up near 99% a lot of the time. The battery is also shot and needs replacing.
This would mean that he's probably doing media tasks and multi-tasking, which is going to use up a good chunk of RAM.
I was just simply recommending him an anti virus program that is a good alternative to Mcafee. I agree Avast is much better, but let him decide that. I have also worked on that laptop and it is more than adequate to do basic tasks and it did not seem laggy, once again it is all up to him, budget or save up for something better.
p.s. 2gb of ram is more than enough to run Vista.
Yup. Basic tasks are pretty much office apps and browsing the internet and listening to music. He'd be able to do that with his current laptop, so obviously he's trying to do that
and more and it's why he's having problems; skimping on RAM and CPU in the next laptop he buys will end up resulting in the same problem down the road--not immediately, but down the road as the computer ages...6 months to a year when many programs are installed and packed in...or even right off the bat if he's a heavy multi-tasker.
Vista uses around 1GB out of the box, as far as I've found. Once you start installing programs and multi-tasking, that number steadily increases. On most customer computers that I set up, Vista ends up using right around 1.75-2GB, depending on what's installed and what they run at a given time. Plan on using photoshop (which would be a media task; he never specified what he meant by that), and you might as well just say it uses around 3-3.5GB when that's running, depending on how much you tell PS it can use. So, there's my reasoning behind:
If you need a laptop and plan to use it for your main computer, save up some money and get something decent with a C2D and 4GB of RAM.
I run Vista on my desktop with 1 Gb of RAM. No problems at all! I don't want to turn this into a Vista debate, but 2 Gb is plenty. I hate that Vista has such a bad rep. ***+1 to Vista***
I'd hate to use your computer for anything more than an internet surfing machine.
Have you compared, side-by-side, the difference between Vista running 1GB of RAM and Vista running 4 or 6GB? If not, you need to...the difference is very clear.
Keep in mind what I explained above. If Vista is idling using 1+GB of RAM and you only HAVE 1GB of RAM, it's going to be accessing the hard drive/virtual memory to keep up with your demands. This slows everything wayyyy down..even more so if you have a 5400RPM drive versus a 7200RPM drive.
This why I recommend 4GB of RAM. It's cheap anyways! You can upgrade it yourself. It's usually one or two screws, pop the pins out, pull the modules out, put the new ones in, put the cover and screws back in and boom. Good to go. This way, you can just shut off your virtual memory and use all of the physical memory. Much much speedier. If you want to optimize Vista, that is what I recommend. If you plan on getting something with 2GB of RAM, then please wait till W7 comes out so you don't have to upgrade your RAM right off the bat.
Netbooks are very nice to just have around the house but not as a main. Though I was successful in using an Acer Aspire One as my main for about 3 months. If you just want something to check email and type papers and browse the web, then get a netbook.
Please tell me you're joking. Seriously.
Bottom line: You get what you pay for. If you buy a $300 computer, you are getting a $300 computer. Period.
