More ram for an old laptop - worth it?

michaels

I have been given an old laptop I thought the kids could use. It is a celeron 2600 with 256 of ram.

It seemed to run OK with a frresh windows xp install but by the time I had put on SP3and anti-virus it was unusably slow.

i could buy a 1gb stick of ram for £17.50but and wonderingif that would be just wastingmoney or if it would make it useable again.

Thanks for any thoughts.

debitcardmayhem

Try a small linux live distribution first , but you don't say what the ages of the kids are and what they would want it for. Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux or even Ubuntu would probably work "better/faster" with that small amount of ram.

michaels

Thanks DCM.

Kids are only and 8 and use windows at school so sticking with windows if possible would be better. It is amazing how much better XP ran before all the service packs.

debitcardmayhem

michaels wrote: »

Thanks DCM.

Kids are only and 8 and use windows at school so sticking with windows if possible would be better. It is amazing how much better XP ran before all the service packs.

It would be better then with 1GB , but don't put too much(software) on it tell everyone what laptop it is and someone will come up with the best option for more RAM

closed

which AV did you put on, and what is the commit charge and peak commit from task manager, performance

post a hijackthis log

If you have a router, you could get away with xp sp2 (or less), avast free (custom install, no chrome or avast community), opera portable, and cleanmem, malwarebytes free, and windows update disabled for a kids machine. Create a disk image after reinstallation, then you can put it back to original state in 5 minutes.

NiftyDigits

DDR or SDR?

If DDR;

1 GB DDR £15

If you are short on dough, just put another 256 MB module in for £4.

Horlock

Most important thing IMO is remove any antivirus.
I suspect that the windows updates would have added microsoft security center. Get rid of that.
I know some people may argue that viruses aren't nice. But if it is a PC for children (a) they probably wont get one (b) if they do you can simply reinstall windows - they wont have any GCSE coursework on the laptop that you can't afford to lose.

aerostar

Before purchasing your ram, make sure you check if the "old" laptop can take the 1gb module, goto crucial memory uk and run the scanner they have, that will tell you what modules and specification it could take.

macman

512MB is the absolute minimum to run XP, 1GB would be better.

Notmyrealname

michaels wrote: »

Thanks DCM.

Kids are only and 8 and use windows at school so sticking with windows if possible would be better. It is amazing how much better XP ran before all the service packs.

SP3 is the killer. Up to and including SP2, performance was acceptable with 256MB although not stellar. SP3 doubled the requirements.

For a laptop that old, 1GB will be quite expensive.

michaels

NiftyDigits wrote: »

DDR or SDR?

If DDR;

1 GB DDR £15

If you are short on dough, just put another 256 MB module in for £4.

Thanks everyone for all your help.

I am worried about not being completely up to date on windows as it is on the same lan as all the other pcs in the house so if it got infected then the others could be hit too. It does seem strange that XP which used to be fine is now so much bigger. I am using Avast AV as I find that is less slowing than AVG or Avira and widows firewall.

I found a site saying this was compatible - if it needs 333 will the 400 from ebay listed above also work?