BillyMalc Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 I've had my laptop, a Dell Inspiron, for about 4-5 years now. At the moment it takes about 10 minutes from starting up to being able to go online. Once it's online - god help ya! I've spent the best part of 2 hours last night to watch a 9 minute video on Youtube, the thing kept stopping and starting, stopping and starting, and "transferring ...." (whatever data it was), and to cut a long story short, I've still not been able to watch it. I had Mozilla Firefox, but I've now changed to Google Chrome this morning - best ideas appear to be popping up at 6AM! - which does appear to be slightly better, as Firefox kept "not responding", but I've still not seen that vid .... Oh, I'm with Talktalk btw - dunno if that makes a massive amount of difference? Also, when I have t'internet on it takes forever for Mic Word to start up and it appears to be unable to keep up with my not-that-fast typing. I'm looking at the egg timer more than anything else on that thing. Anyways, long story short, the thing drives me up the wall!! Would any PC knowledgeable Fugees know if there'd be a way to seriously speed up the working order of my damn laptop or has the bloody thing come to the end of its natural lifespan and would it be kinder to send it to the great laptop sanctuary in the sky and get a new one? I've already done defrags and clean ups and what have ya, but it don't appear to make a difference Any advice MUCH appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 I assume you haven't upgraded it at all in the past 4 - 5 years? The original memory and processors are still in it? If thats the case then I suspect whats happened is that technology and the net has moved on and your laptop is lagging behind - a 4 -5 yr old laptop is probably running at less than 1gb ram and thats if the laptop was top of the range back then - chances are it's only running 512mb which is barely enough to get online with nowadays. It sounds to me like a combination of things, some could well be due to a very resource intense program running in the background either something you've installed or just updated. Streaming stuff like video is affected by net speed as well as your own internet connection and/or laptop if it was on youtube then there are times when it just gets overloaded and it wouldn't matter how fast your connection is or how good your laptop/pc the problem is their end and theres nothing you can do about it. It's also affected by the "throttling" that ISP's do - for example even tho I'm on a very fast "unlimited" connection I know damned well BT throttle my download speed between 1pm and midnight so I don't download between those times - it doesn't usually affect me streaming from youtube but then again I have a fast connection to begin with so it's only larger files and vids that it affects. Before deciding if the laptop needs replacing it's worth seeing what the specs are and if you can upgrade it - that would be the cheapest option, however if it were me and if I could afford it I would be looking to replace it at that age rather than upgrading it as it'll need replacing sooner rather than later anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mooandboo Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 My PC is about the same age, has 512mb RAM and I'm also with TalkTalk and use Firefox. It's way slower than it used to be and I get the 'type the word & it appears a few seconds later' sometimes but videos are usually ok If you want to send me a link to the video I'll let you know how It is for me & it might help you rule out a few things perhaps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wendbert Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 I upgraded the RAM in my laptop a year or so ago - it was originally 512Mb and I added another 1Gb which was really easy to do and under £20 I seem to remember. Made a vast difference in performance!! I just wene to the Toshiba website, searched for memory upgrade and ordered from their authorised dealer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brierley Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 I suppose you've already run all the system maintenance - clean up and defragmentation? Might make it a little quicker if you haven't run it for some time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 My guess is follow Snows initial advice & get some more memory or possibly a new machine. I bought a 2nd hand pc a few months back that only had 256mb left in it. Got a new broadband connection, initially running at around 6mb most of the time (maximum line will support) Pc worked but sometimes froze. At some point I put Norton Internet Security on it (but can't remember exactly when) & at some point the broadband became much slower. Its running Windows ME & I stuck another 256mb in to make 512mb which made it a bit better but not to what it was originally running at. At some point I put a different h/d in & loaded XP, instantly seemed to be running much faster (but I was only "playing around", wasn't keen on XP & haven't bothered with it anymore yet) My guess is either Norton is using a far bit of memory & I need to install some more or the ISP began throttling it significantly but without uninstalling Norton or trying installing it on XP which I haven't been bothered with yet & using same memory & broadband I won't know for sure. If you get there before I do let us know what effect the memory upgrade has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyMalc Posted February 10, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 Thanks for all your replies, much appreciated! Right, on advice from one of our techy blokes in t'office I've done a proper clean up (didn't know how to do that before ) and remoed all in all 63 (!!!) programmes and other unused stuff from the thing. Coupled with Google Chrome as a browser rather than Firefox, it appear we are cooking on gas - for the time being at least. I'll look into buying an upgrade - you're right Snow, I've never upgraded it, I know how to surf and use Mic Office, but that's about it - for the time being £20 for an upgrade sounds better than a whole new PC, but, like I said, I'm a numpty when it comes to these things: do you get something sent over the internet that you have to download or is it an actual box of some sort that you get in the post? I've got NO idea! Oh and I fianlly got to watch the bloody vid - it was good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 RAM is/are actual physical bits of kit, so they'd come in a padded envelope usually they usually just slot into the lap top/pc but if you've never done it before bat your eyes at the nice techy blokey and get him to do it for you (2 min job) You first need to find out what RAM yours has at the moment, then have a google and see what type you need to upgrade - I don't want to get too technical but sometimes you can just buy another "stick" and sometimes you have to take out the one you have and replace that with the better one. I shouldn't think you'd pay more than £30 tops for more RAM - it is essentially quite a simple job on a PC a lap top is a bit more fiddly hence me suggesting you get the nice techy bloke to do it for you, it can get a wee bit more tricky if your laptop needs the RAM to be in matched pairs but if you have a look on Dell's website at the specs for yours that should tell you all you need to know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyMalc Posted February 11, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2010 OMG Snow, that sounds waaay too complicated! And I wouldn't dare asking the techy bloke - they are pretty damn strict about using "company property" for personal use! It's working a lot better than it was before, so I'll make do for a bit longer, until it combusts spontaneously (the old one did, LOL!) - thanx! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wendbert Posted February 11, 2010 Report Share Posted February 11, 2010 Honestly Billy, it is really quite easy Have a look at this clip - I did a google search on "Dell Inspiron memory upgrade" Models do vary slightly, but thats pretty much what I did to upgrade the memory in my laptop, so I expect your is similar. I've Googled Dell and got to info about memory from the support section on their site: http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/memconfig.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&manufact=694&s=dhs&stype=1&family=Inspiron%20Laptops Just click on the relevant model and it should bring up the memory options Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houndwoman Posted February 15, 2010 Report Share Posted February 15, 2010 I have recently had problems too Billy but was prompted to get someone to sort it as I had the 'XP Internet Security 2010' virus get and it blocked everything on my laptop. I have a Toshiba Satellite which is 6 years old and it had been running so slow for a very long time and I thought I needed to invest in a new one. I found someone local who has fixed it all and it is as good as new now He added more RAM and also the 'C Cleaner' thingy and 'Malwarebytes' and it is amazing now. He said there was six different spyware things in there as well as the virus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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