Although SAS is good stuff for many issues I would question the value of any tools that include additional ongoing background tasks under the circumstances.
My biggest question would be do you still have problems with 3-5 tabs or is it only when you go 10-20+. This is not a “typical” browsing behavior in my experience and demanding that a mobile class i3 give good long haul performance under that style of load is not entirely realistic unless you are dealing in fairly light pages like the SDMB.
if you want something to blow out temp files, cookies, java and flash caches, etc.
For Windows XP, that was almost universally true. The only time it isn’t is if you are running XP 64-bit, which was very rare and suffered from a lack of drivers.
If you are willing to install Windows 7 (amd64 - the 64-bit version) on your system, it will be able to use as much memory as you can install. Vista will also use all memory, but almost no-one should install Vista since 7 has been out for a few years.
I read that comment as “defragment the hard drive or install a SSD”. Since you already have the SSD, the disk is likely about as fast as it is going to get. Moden SSDs are 6Gbit/sec SATA 3, while your computer is likely SATA 2. So the SSD is being limited by the speed of your computer’s SATA ports.
Sometimes you can. It depends if the system has support for faster processors. As I recall the original Core i3/5/7 processors, the i3 and i5 had built-in graphics while the i7 did not. So to upgrade to an i7, you need a laptop mainboard that has a separate graphics chip.
Ok, so you’re running Windows 7 already. 32-bit or 64-bit? (it will say in “Control Panel / All Control Panel Items / System” under “System type:”). May as well also post the rest of the info from that screen as well (processor type, memory).
By the way, what is the exact model number of this system (not anything on the keyboard bezel, but from the bottom of the case (usually)?
That sounds like an in-place update. When you boot the install CD, select “custom” or “advanced” installation from the menu and tell it to install a new copy of Windows rather than trying to do an update. Be sure everything you do want to keep is backed up first, of course.
The above assumes a generic Windows install disc. If ASUS provided a disk that does something else (restoring from a hidden partition or somesuch), all bets are off. Try to borrow a real Windows 7 disc from someone (you’ll need to enter the Windows serial number assigned to your laptop from the sticker, usually on the bottom of the case, during the installation).
By the way, to give you an idea of what sort of upgrades you can do to notebook hardware, look at my blog post here.
Sounds like either some spectacularly un-educated salespeople or they were trying to steer you into a machine that only handled 4GB. I could see people saying that anything over 4GB was pointless back in the XP days, and even while Vista was [not] catching on, but to say that in 2009 when Windows 7 was released seems very odd.
Ok. The ASUS spec sheet here says “up to 4 G SDRAM”. Yet the HM55 Express chipset in that system can take up to 8GB. A quick check of the Crucial web site here says that it can take this kit for 8GB. You can, of course, use brands other than Crucial. However, avoid generic memory unless you get a guarantee that it will work in your system - the chipset is rather picky about the types of modules it will accept.
Before you go and do that, you should confirm that your system is being limited by memory. You can either use Task Manager / Performance to look at memory usage or whatever other performance monitoring tool you’d like.
The default behavior with a generic Windows disk, as I mentioned earlier, is “upgrade in place”. You want to do an install if you want to remove all traces of the previous installation (including user files / data).
From hard earned experience I can tell you that tracking cookies can slow the shit out of a machine, and the more tabs open the slower it goes. (right now I have 9 open in Sea Monkey and another 3 in Chrome +plus iTunes playing I often have 20 plus tabs open in SM)
I have an I7 with 8 gigs of RAM and if there are more than just a few tracking cookies on my system, I can start to detect a slow down
He can always uninstall it if the overhead gets to be too much, I just looked at my system, it is taking 640K of memory right now.
It would seem to be a good idea to start with the low hanging fruit first. Clean the crap off the machine and see where he is at.
I used up more than 50 percent of my SSD drive. So if i were to format it, would it get back to normal speed or close to it and when i bought it?
Another question i have is if i increase my ram, its 4gb. My laptop can do 8gb. Do you think this will make a big difference?
Stupid question: what do people do with hundreds of tabs open on a browser? How do you see them all? I don’t think I’ve ever had more than eight or so open tabs myself and I just don’t understand how one can keep track of that many open tabs.
Speaking for myself lets I’m on a fresh boot and want to cruise the net
I’ll open my browser like this:
Tab 1 gmail
Tab 2 Facebook
Tab3 SDMB new posts. As I read the list I will center click every thread that sounds interesting so…
Tabs 4-25 SDMB threads and links from SDMB threads
As I finish each thread I close that tab.
Formatting it will not only clear out space, it will also clear out things that are loading in the background and are taking up resources. The computer should end up as fast as it was when you bought it.
This assumes though that you don’t have a hardware issue, like dust clogging the heat sinks and making the processor slow down due to overheating.
Are you sure? Because what Windows calls defragging when it comes to SSDs is different from what it is for classic HDs. If I remember correctly, it just force completes all waiting delete operations.