Upgade RAM..Anything else I can do..?

theaaao

Heys guys,
Ive been without my laptop recently and have been forced to use the desktop computer at home, which is SO SLOW..

So I went checking, thinking it had 2gb of ram, but turns out its only got 1gb so I'm going to upgrade this to 2gb. Well sure I might as well go to 4gb while im at it!

Its 32 bit windows XP, so 4gb is the limit I know.
Just wondering if ye might recommend anything else I could do/upgrade to speed it up? I'm going to start uninstalling unused programmes in the coming days. Also where is best to buy this? And is there a specific type/brand I need depending on my computer?

Its only used with Word excel etc as well as internet browsing, so its use is not heavy. What difference would upgrading to windows 7 be? Or is that even worth it for what its used for?

Specfics are as follows-all I understand is the ram bit! :
Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz
2.99GHz,1.00GB of RAM

THANKS!:D

Eboggles

theaaao wrote: »

Heys guys,
Ive been without my laptop recently and have been forced to use the desktop computer at home, which is SO SLOW..

So I went checking, thinking it had 2gb of ram, but turns out its only got 1gb so I'm going to upgrade this to 2gb. Well sure I might as well go to 4gb while im at it!

Its 32 bit windows XP, so 4gb is the limit I know.
Just wondering if ye might recommend anything else I could do/upgrade to speed it up? I'm going to start uninstalling unused programmes in the coming days. Also where is best to buy this? And is there a specific type/brand I need depending on my computer?

Its only used with Word excel etc as well as internet browsing, so its use is not heavy. What difference would upgrading to windows 7 be? Or is that even worth it for what its used for?

Specfics are as follows-all I understand is the ram bit! :
Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz
2.99GHz,1.00GB of RAM

THANKS!:D

What's your budget? A linux distro might be your best option, have it running on my old parents Pentium 4 and it's running great! Specs a lot similar to yours actually; it's a Dell Dimension 3000.

theaaao

yeah mines a dimension 5000! I guess my budget is up to €100 depending on if its worth while. I really dont know how much I should be spending!

Eboggles

theaaao wrote: »

yeah mines a dimension 5000! I guess my budget is up to €100 depending on if its worth while. I really dont know how much I should be spending!

Well the builder in me would just say scrap it and get a new build, but I don't think that's possible.

RAM would speed your system up a bit, but I wouldn't recommend dropping €100 on dead technology, especially really old RAM.

RAM for that machine would be quite expensive too, so I wouldn't see the point. Have a look at Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Linux Mint. They're all extremely fast, stable Linux distributions that are free to use. They'll speed up your system massively due to the fact that they're very lightweitght. Don't be put off by the whole "Linux is difficult/buggy/slow/for hackers/confusing/all of the above" thing; those people are idiots who haven't even bothered taking the time to use the operating system and make a personal judgement.

All you need to get started is a thing called Wubi. You'll find it on the websites I linked. What it does is installs whatever Linux distribution (flavour, if you will) you want alongside your Windows installation, and makes it a program within Windows. The benefits to this are that you can uninstall it whenever you want through windows.

If you want to just try it, you can download an ISO to a CD or USB.

theaaao

So what youre telling me is that if I go with the Linux option and have dual OS on the system, it will improve my computer speed?
Ill be honest, I dont know anything about linux other then that its a free OS popular with programmers. I dont understand how it will benefit me?
Out of curiosity, how much would the RAM be?

Eboggles

theaaao wrote: »

So what youre telling me is that if I go with the Linux option and have dual OS on the system, it will improve my computer speed?
Ill be honest, I dont know anything about linux other then that its a free OS popular with programmers. I dont understand how it will benefit me?
Out of curiosity, how much would the RAM be?

Using Linux would help your speed, yes. Try it on a LiveCD first to see if it's for you.

theaaao

Okay I hadnt considered this option...and I dont mean to shoot you down...

But changing OS Vs upgrading the RAM:

I'm used to windows. More importantly,so are my parents, who are the prime users.They dont understand that windows is an OS not a programme and think all computers are the same...There not going to like, plus understand,this OS change and will want to keep things the same because there used to it.
They also only know of microsoft word as a word processor, and switching from home to work computers could be will be frustrating for them when it comes to file type and which programme to use etc...
Will more RAM have the same or more of an impact compared to 1GB of RAM and using linux? Because for the sake of simplicity, I dont care much about the price.

Eboggles

theaaao wrote: »

Okay I hadnt considered this option...and I dont mean to shoot you down...

But changing OS Vs upgrading the RAM:

I'm used to windows. More importantly,so are my parents, who are the prime users.They dont understand that windows is an OS not a programme and think all computers are the same...There not going to like, plus understand,this OS change and will want to keep things the same because there used to it.
They also only know of microsoft word as a word processor, and switching from home to work computers could be will be frustrating for them when it comes to file type and which programme to use etc...
Will more RAM have the same or more of an impact compared to 1GB of RAM and using linux? Because for the sake of simplicity, I dont care much about the price.

Linux would make more of a difference than RAM. Wouldn't be much, but still faster.

YuM

Crucial should be able to sort you out

theaaao

Can I just add to the current ram by buying the 2gb kit and bring me up to 3GB total? Or do I need to buy new ram altogether?
Also presuming that all I do is slot it in like most tutorial vids on YT?

Gurgle

theaaao wrote: »

Can I just add to the current ram by buying the 2gb kit and bring me up to 3GB total?

Yep, so long as you've got enough slots.
Depending on the age of your system (and what came to hand when the operator in Dell was assembling it) there could be 1 x 1GB / 2 x 512MB / 4 x 256MB.

theaaao

Gurgle wrote: »

Yep, so long as you've got enough slots.
Depending on the age of your system (and what came to hand when the operator in Dell was assembling it) there could be 1 x 1GB / 2 x 512MB / 4 x 256MB.

Ah yes had not thought of the possibility that the four slots could be in use atm! Must check this out!