slow pc should we buy a laptop - advice pls.

eamon

Another option is to buy the laptop and get the nice new goodies (not very MSE) and replace the operating system in the PC with a linux version (e.g. xubuntu and its free). Think about what you need a PC (laptop) for in the first place. Xubuntu comes with word processing and spreadsheet capabilities and these should be compatible with many MS office products (I haven't tried but I have checked and documents can be saved as .doc etc) It also has firefox installed.

If all the above is an option then before you install linux back up all documents that you need to an external medium. As you already have a very slow PC there is no benefit in trying to have a dual boot system I would just bite the bullet and install linux as your OS. As all you work is already backed up your new shiney laptop will be able to access all that.

I my house I have a laptop (Vista) for everyday use (surfing, e-mails, music ect) and an old PC (xubuntu) for when I need to do serious keyboard bashing.

closed

Zanzibar wrote: »

Without actual specs you can't make that judgement. Here a 2.2GHz CPU with the technology of the day (e.g. PATA disk and PC 2700 memory) will be slow. Reloading is a good idea but on todays web with richer content, complexity and data volumes it will be slower than it was when new. If you never use modern web sites or update anything you may find it acceptable - but that's not realistic.

Expending this much of the users time to get to something still slow is pointless; and this effort on a hard drive towards its end of life. Comments like '.. should tale less than 30 minutes' is unrealistic even for someone who knows what they are doing let alone a home user who has never used any of these programs before.

When resurrecting PCs this old there is a cut off spec at which its not worth the time. If you are a geek doing it for a hobby, a student with lots of time, have zero cash or have no real life then fair enough. There are no life prizes for sitting about in front of a slow PC for years - the angel of PC slowness doesn't appear at your death bed and give you a golden mouse.

I've certainly spent more than 30 minutes on this problem, it's a few ticks in hijackthis and a couple of uninstalls, easily done in 30 minutes if the instructions were followed, and timely answers given.

I don't know what demanding tasks you think a 2.2GHz processor will be slow at, but I've yet to find one. Latest games maybe, but most people browse, play music, watch video, store photo's, word process, spreadsheets, a 7 year old pc could do that when it was new, it can now.

Reinstall windows or fix the bloat, it won't be slow, it's that simple. If people want to throw away perfectly usable PC's in the "must have the latest specs because someone says that's what you need nowadays" game that's upto them, I'm presenting the facts on a money saving website, take them or leave them.

Personally I would do the few clicks, rather than spend £300+ and throw it in the landfill, but the OP appears to have given up (as do many others), so the debate is academic.

Donnie

Zanzibar wrote: »

Without actual specs you can't make that judgement. Here a 2.2GHz CPU with the technology of the day (e.g. PATA disk and PC 2700 memory) will be slow. Reloading is a good idea but on todays web with richer content, complexity and data volumes it will be slower than it was when new. If you never use modern web sites or update anything you may find it acceptable - but that's not realistic.

Expending this much of the users time to get to something still slow is pointless; and this effort on a hard drive towards its end of life. Comments like '.. should tale less than 30 minutes' is unrealistic even for someone who knows what they are doing let alone a home user who has never used any of these programs before.

When resurrecting PCs this old there is a cut off spec at which its not worth the time. If you are a geek doing it for a hobby, a student with lots of time, have zero cash or have no real life then fair enough. There are no life prizes for sitting about in front of a slow PC for years - the angel of PC slowness doesn't appear at your death bed and give you a golden mouse.

I think that you are overstating the 'slowness' of your described system.

Her PC with a Factory Restore or a fresh install will load fully in less than a minute. Any web content will still run smoothly. Her PC will run faster than it did when new by virtue of the RAM upgrade.

Whilst there is no question that it can match a modern machine for speed, it will most definitely usable for any up to date web content and office programs.

rrf494g

buying a new laptop will only be a temporary fix.

I think you need to get familiar with a toolkit that can keep your existing machine up to speed, as a number of the posts have been helping you with. Even if you do eventually get a new laptop, that will slow down too if you haven't got the techniques for cleaning out the programs that insist on owning your computer, running constantly, and frequently using the internet in the background. I help out a few people/friends with these activities (clean-up, speed-up) and these people were all close to dumping a perfectly good machine that had become unusable because of garbage, resource hogging programs. Culprits are . .
Malware
Viruses
Anti_virus programs that are not efficient
Firewalls that are not efficient
Regular programs that keep checking for updates/payments due
Tracking programs of "activities" eg internet activity within Windows system

so either "find a friend" or learn your own toolkit via the posts on a variety of threads I think.
Good Luck.

Zanzibar

I don't know what demanding tasks you think a 2.2GHz processor will be slow at..

If you had this sort of system for daily use you would know.

"..it will most definitely usable for any up to date web content and office programs."

Only 'useable' if you are prepared to have a compromised experience. A 1920s MG is useable just not practical. As mentioned you are not using software from 2003 for the web (and many other tasks) - if you did then performance wont be compromised, however use modern web browsers and sites and it will show - notably with typical 2.x Pentium 4s and the supporting architecture from 2003/4 and before.

I refurbish PCs of this ilk - blank, reload, update and test. They then get used for vertical system tasks like spam filtering so I have an idea of what a spec is capable of. To test I pulled a Dell 2400 (2.4GHz Celeron, 768Mb, 40Gb disk) - i.e. pretty close to the posters system. I imaged it to vanilla XP SP3 with all updates and Firefox. Boots nicely and runs office fine - use it a bit more and the limitations become apparent.

I ran You Tube as it hammers the CPU on older systems. Result? it runs but it stutters - the CPU was a continual 85-95%. Same stuttering with iPlayer.

Using the BBC news web site maxed out the CPU at 100% between page loads; checked BBC pages from 2003 - completely different kettle of fish which load without delay - but those aren't used now. Could the web be used? - yes indeed especially with simple content like Google searches, but use a variety of sites and you get delays.

And this was a fresh vanilla system with no rubbish loaded, defragged with sensible settings and spinning like a top. Give it a few months with a user, add programs, updates and settings changes and it will be less than fun.

Up the specs 20% and you would get better results - maybe now 70% utilisation for iPlayer. At that point streaming should be smoother but its still close to where glitches in the system will cause stalls - there is little headroom before things max out. Its obviously a sliding scale but this spec is at point where it starts to be shown up in basic use. If you say 'well I'll put up with it' then great - many wouldn't.

With the 'next generation' of PC from around 2005/6 you don't see these issues. This would be a P4/3GHz/800MHz with 400MHz RAM and a SATA disk and it will run most everything fine - typically 50% faster or 50% less CPU used than the system described. And a system like this can be had for ~£60.

Donnie

Zanzibar wrote: »

If you had this sort of system for daily use you would know.

Only 'useable' if you are prepared to have a compromised experience. A 1920s MG is useable just not practical. As mentioned you are not using software from 2003 for the web (and many other tasks) - if you did then performance wont be compromised, however use modern web browsers and sites and it will show - notably with typical 2.x Pentium 4s and the supporting architecture from 2003/4 and before.

I refurbish PCs of this ilk - blank, reload, update and test. They then get used for vertical system tasks like spam filtering so I have an idea of what a spec is capable of. To test I pulled a Dell 2400 (2.4GHz Celeron, 768Mb, 40Gb disk) - i.e. pretty close to the posters system. I imaged it to vanilla XP SP3 with all updates and Firefox. Boots nicely and runs office fine - use it a bit more and the limitations become apparent.

I ran You Tube as it hammers the CPU on older systems. Result? it runs but it stutters - the CPU was a continual 85-95%. Same stuttering with iPlayer.

Using the BBC news web site maxed out the CPU at 100% between page loads; checked BBC pages from 2003 - completely different kettle of fish which load without delay - but those aren't used now. Could the web be used? - yes indeed especially with simple content like Google searches, but use a variety of sites and you get delays.

And this was a fresh vanilla system with no rubbish loaded, defragged with sensible settings and spinning like a top. Give it a few months with a user, add programs, updates and settings changes and it will be less than fun.

Up the specs 20% and you would get better results - maybe now 70% utilisation for iPlayer. At that point streaming should be smoother but its still close to where glitches in the system will cause stalls - there is little headroom before things max out. Its obviously a sliding scale but this spec is at point where it starts to be shown up in basic use. If you say 'well I'll put up with it' then great - many wouldn't.

With the 'next generation' of PC from around 2005/6 you don't see these issues. This would be a P4/3GHz/800MHz with 400MHz RAM and a SATA disk and it will run most everything fine - typically 50% faster or 50% less CPU used than the system described. And a system like this can be had for ~£60.

Have a system here with an AMD Duron....so we shall see.

Going to check the BBC website and YouTube, as you have mentioned.

If they run smoothly, you are going to be in trouble for wasting my time.

The argument is not about whether or not they should buy a new machine, but whether they should scrap a perfectly capable machine.

I'm sure you can see how ridiculous is your analogy. A 1920's car??

Try a car from 2003. You may not use it for your cross country trips, but kept in good condition, you can still use it as a 'runaround'.

Two hours spent on a clean install and re-installation of programs will be time well spent.

So when the children are hogging the new laptop/PC, the adults can still surf, watch YouTube etc

Viewing a video on YouTube; Anything from 240p to 360p runs quite smoothly with no buffering. Anything above that; 480p/720p and there is unacceptable buffering.

Taking a look at the BBC website... Your assertions here are again overstated. Pages load up fast, CPU utilisation does goes up momentarily, as expected. Of course if there is an embedded Flash video it takes a second or two longer.

Watch films from the Hard Drive, again no problem. A perfectly usable machine.
This is using an AMD Duron. Admittedly is has 1GB RAM in it, but that is because it is being used as a Music Station, running Native Instruments Komplete 6.

Zanzibar

So you used an even older PC, went on the web, it didnt run properly and you gave yourself a medal for trying? Ok, nice.

Now just work your way up PC specs to the point where say iPlayer and You Tube work properly (not 300 pixel excuses) and that can be your benchmark minimum spec PC to inflict on someone.

That spec being in excess of the posters PC - a 7 year old PC like that is what it is - ie. not an alternative to a newer system (which was the proposition).

Any web content will still run smoothly.

..except it won't will it - hence the test to show that.


The 1920s car - its about the equivalent and relative advances of the technologys.

gonzo127

although i have skipped most of the pages in here and just looked at this last one i have to say a 2.2ghz cpu with 512 ram is fine for the internet

i use a very old dell ultra portable laptop which has a 1.4ghz cpu and 512 ram and it runs everything i need to just fine no stutters etc, ok this could be down to the operating system i use as i dont use windows but still works fantastically for basic tasks

Donnie

Zanzibar wrote: »

So you used an even older PC, went on the web, it didnt run properly and you gave yourself a medal for trying? Ok, nice.

Now just work your way up PC specs to the point where say iPlayer and You Tube work properly (not 300 pixel excuses) and that can be your benchmark minimum spec PC to inflict on someone.

That spec being in excess of the posters PC - a 7 year old PC like that is what it is - ie. not an alternative to a newer system (which was the proposition).

..except it won't will it - hence the test to show that.


The 1920s car - its about the equivalent and relative advances of the technologys.

Where did I write that it didn't run properly?
It seems that you are stuck in wanting to be right, that you are unable to see the sense in what anyone else has written.

I'm sure that you are not a complete idiot, so don't act like one.

I'm also sure that you understand that the CPU dictates the capability of the system, so the OP's CPU will likely outstrip the performance of an AMD Duron.

The majority of YouTube video is not High Definition, so the pixel count is relevant. As it means that you will be able to watch ALL YouTube content, but you won't be able to upscale the video to the HD versions if available.

When did the BBC iPlayer arrive in this comparison? You wrote about the BBC News website.

Your statement

The 1920s car - its about the equivalent and relative advances of the technologys.

has no scientific basis and just adds further to your idiotic comment.

Lastly and probably most importantly, you ignored my statement

The argument is not about whether or not they should buy a new machine, but whether they should scrap a perfectly capable machine.

in order to continue your baseless argument.

I think that it is telling that absolutely no one here has agreed with you.