Acer Laptop

Threebabes

Hi

My DD has got an Acer laptop and its really slow. Wondering if buying some RAM would make a difference to it.

Also live in the North East, any know how much approx. it would to get it done.

Don't really know a lot about computers/laptops so would probably have to take it to a computer shop.

Thanks

gonzo127

check out the sticky at the top of the forum called how to speed up a slow or infected pc before you go spending any money.

all it takes is some time, and of course if you have any questions dont be afraid to ask

Threebabes

Thank you for your reply. Will have a look at it. Thanks

NeverAgain_2

You say you don't know much about computers, so you are likely to get into a muddle if you attempt to speed up the laptop yourself.

You live in the North East, I've used this shop in Chester-le-Street a couple of times and found the service and prices reasonable.

There's a small car park around the corner.

http://www.computercentre.org.uk/

My second suggestion is to try this free software, which is easy to follow and has done a good job on two of my machines:

http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html

johnjackson

I've added more RAM to computers in the past and it hardly makes any difference to the speed. You are better off using the money you would of paid for the RAM and the proceeds from the sale of the old laptop to buy a new laptop. (check out the sticky at the top first though)

prowla

(Assuming it's Windows...)

Adding more memory may not speed up a system, but not having enough will surely slow it down. In general 1 GB or less these days is not enough memory.

You can find out your computer's memory by right-clicking "My Computer" (or "Computer" depending upon your Windows) and selecting properties; mine says "4.00 GB (3.50 GB usable)".

Do Ctrl-Alt-Del, choose "Start Task Manager", Select the "Performance" tab.

Look at the memory usage graph and also look at the Physical Memory "Total" and "Available"; if the usage is high and the Available is low then putting in more memory should help. My machine shows a steady usage of 2.5 GB, with Total = 3582 MB (=3.5 GB) and Available = 1021 MB (1 GB), which is fine.

Threebabes

Its an Acer Extensa 5230. Memory RAM IGB 32bit operating system.


Physical Memory (MB) total 952, cached 308, free 0
Kernal Memory (MB) total 127 Paged 95 Nonpaged 32

Processes 83 CPU Usage 79% Physical Memory 84%

This doesn't mean a thing to me :-/.

Thanks

gonzo127

ok well more RAM might help it as i am guessing IGB should actually be 1GB however i would still say to follow the guide as if your running XP then 1gb RAM is enough, if its vista however then i would say the RAM upgrade would be worth while - however the guide will help with this as well and would still be worth doing in the first instance

for prices a 2gb stick of ram costs as little as £16 on ebuyer and installing it is usually very easy ~ 5 min job for someone who knows what they are doing

Wannie_2

You really don't need to attend a shop for this and more RAM will definitely make a difference.

Running Vista on 1 GB RAM certainly doesn't help.

Shop will likely just run a Factory Restore and charge you a whole lot for the RAM and fitting.

Fitting RAM is consumer friendly and only takes a few minutes. If money is low, you can buy another 1 GB RAM module for under £10.

Otherwise 2GB for £16 is typical.

So you can run a Factory Restore(returns the laptop to how it was when first purchased. Easy for you to do yourself) after making copies of the important data or just do a clean up instead. The extra RAM is essential.

GunJack

that model was supplied with vista, so adding at least an extra half-gig is a must, even better an extra full gig.

It's DDR2 ram up to 667MHz, 2 slots on mobo. Run the crucial scanner to find out how your system is configured (1x1GB in one slot, or 2x512MB in each slot).

http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/

This will then tell you what you need to get, either one or two of these:-

http://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SMEM12DCH bargain at £7 each delivered, with 12-month warranty. Fitting it will only take a few minutes to do it yourself

AND follow the sticky as advised.

closed

83 processes is a lot - post a hijackthis log before spending money.

acers come with a factory restore partition, erecovery, which will put it back to the speed it was at purchase (but will wipe all data in the process)