How to upgrade laptop help...

[Foxholer]

Windows 8 has been out for 2 years, and windows 7 was out for 3 years before that, so if you bought your PC with windows 7 on it then it aint 10 years old, its 5 years max.

Duff gen = duff recommendations keep up the goodish estimates

Wow! Seems such a long time ago too! Goodish indeed!

 

[Farneyman]

So I have decided to go with

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/satellite-l450-16q/CT5623261

and ordered 2GB for the princely sum of £17.99.

Time will tell...

 

[Beezerk]

My ram is only showing as using 1.3Gb of the available 3Gb in the performance tab (when in general use) so I don't know if I'll benefit from adding more ram. That's if I understand it correctly of course lol.
Main problem for me is the old flash player issue in Firefox chestnut, it either slows the laptop right down or freezes so I have to ctrl/alt/del. Installing Panda instead of Avast certainly seems to have increased speed though.

 

[ArnoldArmChewer]

So I have decided to go with

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/satellite-l450-16q/CT5623261

and ordered 2GB for the princely sum of £17.99.

Time will tell...

Exactly what I have just installed, I am a complete numpty on laptops and doing this sort of thing generally, this took about 5 minutes and improved things from the off.

 

[Farneyman]

Exactly what I have just installed, I am a complete numpty on laptops and doing this sort of thing generally, this took about 5 minutes and improved things from the off.

That's good to know as I watched a few youtube clips and it does seem easy enough. Hope it gives this one a wee boost.

 

[Farneyman]

I should add that I just made google chrome my default browser and added adblock to it and it has made surfing on here much quicker.

I was using an AVG search browser before.

The adblock is great!

 

[Foxholer]

Be aware that Chrome has a habit of updating itself without notification - something I'm not happy with as features change for no apparent reason!

While I've been Chrome User for a long time, it seems to be getting a bit fat and ponderous these days. If that affects performance, try Firefox, which seems a tad slimmer/quicker and can be set up to look pretty much identical.

AdBlock is indeed great. It may (or may not) lose GM and some of their advertisers some hits/money having it, but if they're going to have intrusive ads, it serves them right imo! I don't have a problem with 4OD's approach to it though - preventing access if it's detected, but their ads are 'ok'.

 

[NimbleNeil]

Hi mate,

I've briefly read the other comments on this thread just though I'd summarise and explain why stuff is being advised in detail:

RAM:
If your motherboard can support more, then you should upgrade this. RAM is essentially the component that a program uses to run. The files are loaded from the main memory (HDD) into th RAM, which contains cache memory that's a lot faster than physical HDD transfer and allows communication with the CPU to be much quicker and therefore the program run faster. When you have too little RAM for the programs you are running to work on, VRAM (virtual RAM) is created. This is essentially your computer allocating space on the HDD to use for running programs as well as RAM. As the HDD is much sower than RAM, you don't want any of this. By increasing the amount of RAM you have, you decrease the amount of VRAM and therefore your programs can use the faster RAM memory rather than the slower VRAM on the HDD and run smoother.
SSD:
Solid State Drive, It's pretty much a USB stick on a larger scale and again is a faster type of storage than on a Hard disk Drive. What you'd do here is Install windows on the SSD or get a computer guy at PC world to install it, this will just mean that your operating system will boot much faster as the type of storage that it is in is faster than the HDD. You don't need a massive amount of space for this if it's only the main system you need on the Drive.

Browser:
So long as it isn't internet explorer or opera or safari you're fine. I use Chrome because i prefer the looks and options but Firefox is essentially the exact same, both run smoothly and have the options for ad-block, although ad-block takes memory to run, the files that would have needed to be loaded are more than this so it quickens the loading of pages.

Defrag:
Short for disk defragmentation, this tends to happen in older systems that don't have an automatic defrag software like windows 7 does. HDD is a circular disk and the files are stored in physical places on this disk. When a disk is highly fragmented, the files are scattered at all points around the circle, meaning the moving arm that reads the disk has to move lots, increasing the time taken for files to load. While I never really see a performance increase, I run defragler and keep fragmentation below 5% just because it feels nice to know my HDD is in good order

As for the antivirus protection, AVG is as good as any but what myself and many of my friends do is run malwarebytes once a week. Malwarebytes only runs when prompted, and has a database of malware that is regularly updated. This just frees up your RAM for other things. So long as you are sensible with what websites you visit and down download anything from dodgy looking sites you shouldn't get any viruses whatsoever. This website can be handy if you're unsure about the legitimacy of a site: http://www.scamadviser.com/


With these in mind I'd say the best things you can do are 1) Upgrade RAM if possible, 2GB really isn't a lot.
2) If your Laptop has motherboard access, upgrade the CPU to at least quad core 3Ghz, an intel i3 is perfect. At the end of the day it's this component that does all the work ;P

Good luck improving your laptop pal,

Neil

 

[Farneyman]

Cheers Neil. Appreciate the information. Just waiting on my 2GB chip to arrive for a start. Will keep you posted as to how I get on.

 

[Farneyman]

Chip arrived today and I managed to put it in in about 2 minutes. A dead simple procedure.

Will see how it performs now over the next few hours.

 

[Farneyman]

Seriously within 5 minutes I have noticed a huge difference in the time it takes for a page to load. Just checked out a couple of youtube clips and they loaded very swiftly.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Farneyman]

What a difference adding the extra 2GB has made to this laptop. Anyone who was thinking of doing the scan and buying the extra...go for it. The actual addition of the part was really simple and the results for me made it very worthwhile. Only cost £17.99 :thup:

If you haven't already completed the scan go here and see if it recommends anything if you feel you want to give your laptop a wee boost.

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en

 

[Farneyman]

So I have managed to acquire my mother in laws old laptop. The problem is the charger is broken. I have ordered a new one off the internet and I am looking at giving it a slight upgrade like my previous one.

The laptop is a HP G7000 and as I am unable to check exact current spec, until charger arrives, I was wondering if any of the IT gurus know if I add extra GB.

Ta

 

[FrankJR319]

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