Correlation between number of programs installed and performance?
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From: Leonard Grey on 19 Jan 2010 12:19 Please note that switching from a 40GB hard drive to an 80GB hard drive does not affect the performance of a computer in any way that you can measure. If you noticed increased performance after adding the new hard drive, it was caused by something else. The speed of a computer depends on many things, including hardware and software. Given your description, it appears that you have an older computer. It is normal and expected for an older computer to run slower as you add newer, more resource-intensive software. To keep your computer running as fast as it can, here are some general tips: 1- Keep your computer free of malware. 2- Try to reduce the number of resource-intensive applictions running in the background. 3- 512MB is a relatively small amount to have for today's software. You will realize improved performance by increasing your installed RAM to 1MB or more. 4- Operate your computer only in ways that are supported. For example: don't tinker with virtual memory or run registry cleaners. --- Leonard Grey Errare humanum est Craze04 wrote: > Hi, > I was having a lot of performance problems on my computer. I have a DELL > desktop with a 2GHz Intel Pentium, with 512MB of RAM and an 80 GB hard drive. > > Previously I had a 40GB hard drive on which my computer was showing really > bad performance. When it went bust, I bought a new hard drive and installed > it in and took the old one out. I found that this replacement of the new hard > drive really bumped up the speed. Firefox, for instance came up with a much > shorter delay. An interesting thing I noticed is with the old hard drive, > Firefox wasnt visible on the screen until it had got about 38MB of RAM space. > Now with the new hard drive I was seeing it come up with as little as 15 MB. > > However from then on I installed several other programs on my new hard > drive. The Norton Antivirus, s/w from the web etc. etc. And what I now see is > that firefox is back to its old ways in that it takes just as long to start > up. Looking at the task manager I see it again does not show until it gets > about 38MB of RAM. The computer too is now as slow as it used to be. > > Is there anything that can be done here ? Is there a correlation between the > numebr of applications installed on a computer and the amout of RAM a process > needs to properly start up ? > >
From: Leonard Grey on 19 Jan 2010 15:36 I never thought I would ever say this, but here goes... For years, I was a card-carrying (Gold Card) member of the Norton Haters Club. And for good reason. Then, just for the heck of it, I tried Norton Internet Security 2009. My, what a difference. Like Marie Osmond before and after Nutrisystem. Other things I hated about Symantec - technical support, heavy footprint, built-in advertising, trouble uninstalling - were no longer problems. I looked for things to hate about NIS 2009, but couldn't find any. And, for the record, the software runs on my soon-to-be replaced 7-year old P4 2.26GHz 1GB of RAM computer. I am impressed. I'm currently using NAV 2010, and really liking it. So let those rotton vegetables fly in the general direction of my face...I can take it. PS #1: I'm using NAV instead of NIS because of a personal choice I made with respect to third-party firewalls. PS #2: I may have converted to NAV personally, but I don't recommend any software product to anyone. Everyone has to make their own decision, is my view. --- Leonard Grey Errare humanum est Gerry wrote: > Like others I would dump Norton for a freeware option. > > The capacity of the hard drive has no direct performance implication. It > may indirectly make defragmentation easier, particularly when the drive > is first replaced. You can get hard drives with slower read / write > speeds. Commonly desktop hard drives are 7,200 RPM but older drives were > less. Laptop hard drives are commonly 5,400 RPM to conserve the battery. > More in this link: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive >
From: Leonard Grey on 19 Jan 2010 18:20
Is that a statement about software, or are you inferring the reason I got married? --- Leonard Grey Errare humanum est Gerry wrote: > Leonard > > Why pay for what you can get for free. > > |