Netbook tips please!

[GregDL]

Hi,
I'm currently having an old netbook with the following specs:
Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 160GB 5.400rpm Seagate HDD, 2 houres of battery life..
Well, I just have some questions:

1. It came with windows 7 starter pre-installed. Would switching to Windows XP (black edition) up the performance?

2. Would switching to 2gb ram instead of the stock 1gb ram make it able to multitask better?

3. Would it be worth it installing a small cheap SSD in it? (64GB)

4. Do you guys have any tips to make it perform better? Or just make the battery last longer than the 2 houres I'm having now?

 

[jaguarskx]

I would say your best bet is to install another 1GB of RAM. That should help with multitasking a little bit as well as slightly increasing battery life. Battery life should increase slightly because there will be less disk swapping where if there is too much data to store in RAM it is then written to the hard drive and if a program needs data that not in RAM, then it looks at the swap file on the hard drive.

Installing Win XP can increase performance since it uses less resources than Win 7, but you need to find out if whatever brand name you have offers Win XP drivers for your specific netbook.

A SSD can improve responsiveness, and battery life a little bit.

Overall, adding RAM and a SSD will not dramatically increase battery life; I would guess maybe another 15 - 20. However, responsiveness should increase. I would prefer saving up money for a small laptop.

 

[GregDL]

I would say your best bet is to install another 1GB of RAM. That should help with multitasking a little bit as well as slightly increasing battery life. Battery life should increase slightly because there will be less disk swapping where if there is too much data to store in RAM it is then written to the hard drive and if a program needs data that not in RAM, then it looks at the swap file on the hard drive.

Installing Win XP can increase performance since it uses less resources than Win 7, but you need to find out if whatever brand name you have offers Win XP drivers for your specific netbook.

A SSD can improve responsiveness, and battery life a little bit.

Overall, adding RAM and a SSD will not dramatically increase battery life; I would guess maybe another 15 - 20. However, responsiveness should increase. I would prefer saving up money for a small laptop.

Well, I had a free upgrade from Win7 starter to win7 home premium and feel it's working smoother now. I'm using this netbook just for internet and homework, maybe some light gaming since I have another laptop with a i7 3610QM and GT 640M, so installing 2GB ram is the option to go for me. Any other tips to make a netbook work smoother, since setfsb doesn't work on my netbook.

 

[Guest]

upgrade to the maximum amount of ram supported [i believe its 2gb for that processor], downgrading to xp will see a pretty large performance increase over windows 7 because windows 7 is way more of a ram and cpu hog. use ccleaner and set up start up and services in msconfig, also if you stick with win7 turn off uac. you could buy a new battery and cycle it properly to get the max life out of it

 

[GregDL]

upgrade to the maximum amount of ram supported [i believe its 2gb for that processor], downgrading to xp will see a pretty large performance increase over windows 7 because windows 7 is way more of a ram and cpu hog. use ccleaner and set up start up and services in msconfig, also if you stick with win7 turn off uac. you could buy a new battery and cycle it properly to get the max life out of it

Thanks for the tips, I will upgrade the ram to 2GB. I already use ccleaner since I had the device and also set up start up and services. Uac is off too. But about the new battery, I just can't find one. It's a netbook from 2008-2009 I think, haven't even found a battery on ebay..

 

[Guest]

you can always bring a 12v car battery and an invertor around with you, but that isnt a very portable solution haha. im sure youll find a replacement soon. netbooks dont really cost that much, have you thought about replacing it with something like this

http/www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+14%26%2334%3B+Laptop+-+4GB+Memory+-+320GB+Hard+Drive+-+Matte+Deep+Blue+Square/5732421.p?id=1218688220686&skuId=5732421&st=x401a&cp=1&lp=1

i just bought it and i have pretty satisfied with its performance. you can even upgrade it to i3 for $70 as long as the processor is socket g2

 

[GregDL]

you can always bring a 12v car battery and an invertor around with you, but that isnt a very portable solution haha. im sure youll find a replacement soon. netbooks dont really cost that much, have you thought about replacing it with something like this

http/www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+14%26%2334%3B+Laptop+-+4GB+Memory+-+320GB+Hard+Drive+-+Matte+Deep+Blue+Square/5732421.p?id=1218688220686&skuId=5732421&st=x401a&cp=1&lp=1

i just bought it and i have pretty satisfied with its performance. you can even upgrade it to i3 for $70 as long as the processor is socket g2

Well it's a pretty sweet deal, but I already own a 15inch notebook so I don't see the point of replacing the netbook for the moment as I can always start up the notebook to search something on the internet (it's even faster than the netbook to boot up). Also, since I own a 15inch notebook, I'm not really interesting of buying something new, certainly not a 14inch notebook. Thanks for the tip about the car battery, will think about that