My Netbook is Slow as a Snail ;_;

[StrawberrySmiles]

Some of you are uber smart and computer geeks, so I thought I'd get some... advice or what have you.

Opening up Paint.Net or Word takes 5 minutes for me to even use it. A lot of things like not respond if I try to click out of it. Also, a lot of "script is not responding" as well.

Year Obtained: Late 2010
Browser Currently Installed: Firefox
Browsers Tried: Chrome, and some lightweight ones

Type: Dell
Windows: 7 Starter
Space: 84.2 GB free
Intel® Atom™ CPU N450 @1.66GH 1.67 GHz

Things Done:

• Uninstallation of unused programs

• Deletion of pointless files (documents and pictures)

• Stopped Dropbox from doing any form of syncing

• Stopped Skype from starting up at start-up, then uninstalled it

• Deletion of temp files

• Deletion of cookies

• Used CCleaner

• Used Malewarebytes

• Done a Disk Defragmentation

Am I doomed?

It's kind of important to have another laptop, since Star's (which is way older than mine) has begun to overheat after using it for only 45 minutes. We have a desktop, though we use our TV as a monitor since it was cheaper that way. A laptop is needed for game development when dealing with graphics, because it's easier to see and doesn't kill our eyes. o.o

 

[bluehazed]

Honestly this is your main problem: Intel® Atom™ CPU N450

This CPU is just bad. 32 bit, no out of order execution, low clock. I believe the late series Pentium IIIs perform better than the early N series atoms.

I'd give throwing Win8 on there a shot since I've found it's a bit faster on crappy hardware, but it's probably not worth the effort.

TLDR: If you have it in your budget and need something quick, get one of these: http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/s ... ogId=10051

They're not great, but they'll do the job. I've got the tablet version of that (The stream 7) that I bought for coffeeshops and shit (it was $120) and it works more or less ok.

Here's a review: http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/11/7363 ... -11-review

 

[ZenVirZan]

Processor specs aside, you might also have processes running in the background stealing memory/CPU. Go into CMD and type

tasklist /V > tasklist.txt

and upload the contents of the text file here so we can have a look :biggrin:

 

[Hybrida]

"Intel® Atom™ CPU N450 @1.66GH 1.67 GHz" Extremely slow processor by today's standards

"Used Malewarebytes" Great move you did there! One of the best moves you could do.

According to what you said so far-- I think it maybe a back ground program slowing you down. Bring up your task manager and see what's talking up the most memory. Here's what I see right now:

And check your processor(s) and memory to see if your laptop is busy or not.
I know this is just basic stuff, but still. Huge spikes in the charts means a lot of crap is going on. Check and see if she's choking.... >_> <_< >_>

If you have any active virus protection going on, that may slow down your computer also. Just look around at processes running.

 

[bluehazed]

Alternatively, pick up a used X200/X201 off ebay. They're older thinkpads, but they'll greatly outperform both of those machines and won't fall apart (thinkpads). Also, quite cheap.

 

[bluehazed]

Or install 9front: http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Here are the screenshots Hybridia asked for:

@Bluehazed: We don't want a tablet/ipad because we need to be able to pixel resources, and they're currently labled in Paint.Net.

At least I think you're pointing to a "pad" like thing. o.o I'm a bit confused about what 9font is.

 

[Hybrida]

Your processes pass in the 1st pic. I see nothing strange there.

Ahh yes. I see... so you have 1 GB of ram according to that 2nd pic. 1013 total physical memory. That it is kinda low. Here's why:

From what I've heard windows 7 use at least 1 gig of ram for itself. That doesn't leave you with much memory for anything else. That would surely crash a computer or cause massive slow downs. I personally believe you just need more memory. Hopefully a real expert shows up here. Thanks for posting.

(I'm also using a laptop, but it's gaming one. Dell XPS brand.)

 

[Allen2014]

你的电脑真好！我用的还是 windows XP系统

 

[ZenVirZan]

In Australia, you can get laptops with 4GB RAM and a Celeron 2.1-2.5GHz processor for under AU$400 so I imagine it'd be even cheaper for you Americans. At this point, looking at 1.6Ghz + 1GB ram, you need to get a new one all together.

If you're going to choose one to buy yourself, you can settle for any laptop as long as it has 4+ GB RAM and faster than 2.0 GHz Processor and it should live for a while. You can decide what price you're happy with.

 

[Xilef]

I remember sticking an extra GB stick into my netbook, it just isn't worth running with less than 2GB of memory.

Additionally, terrible 32bit processor, it is also late 2010, so it is incredibly old by PC laptop standards.

Call it and buy a new one.

The only advice I'd add to buying a laptop is make sure there's a dedicated GPU on board, it doesn't have to be good and certainly doesn't have to be gaming capable, but it adds longevity to your machine as some of the heavy lifting is done on another part of the machine, you aren't relying on the CPU being relevant as much.



God I hate laptops so much.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

We only need a laptop because we have a desktop already, and we never bought a desktop monitor (no place to put it, anyway), so it's hooked up to one of our TVs forever. o.o It's really hard to see what we're doing when working on things, like art.

So we use a laptop for such purposes, and so we aren't using a TV. Also, I can sit here on the couch next to Star while he uses the desktop.

Anyway. We don't have much of a budget, so hmmm...

 

[moog]

你的电脑真好！我用的还是 windows XP系统

this is the answer

 

[Ellie]

This might work, idk

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Laptop-As-a-Monitor

 

[bluehazed]

get more ram

 

[Ellie]

It's a dell, upgrading is not going to be easy.

 

[bluehazed]

Not really

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tNtkGzqn3k

Assuming it's the Mini 10 as that's the only one I can think of with the N450

 

[bluehazed]

It's still the cheapest solution besides installing not windows

 

[bluehazed]

It's easy but you are complicated

 

[rey meustrus]

You really deserve something better than a 2010 netbook. Those things were never meant to be someone's primary computer. In my opinion, your best option is really to use Linux instead, although with the options that have come about in recent years I'm not comfortable recommending a distribution. I do my Linux on command line these days so I don't know much about the Unity/Gnome stuff of whether LXDE is still as lightweight as it used to be (XFCE used to be lightweight but got bloated over time). If it was still 2010 I'd say install Lubuntu.

It's also possible to get RPG Maker working (though buggy) with Wine. Only you can decide if the overall speed boost is worth buggy RPG Maker though.

If you have the money though, you should buy something more recent. Something that isn't a netbook.