Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Slow Computer?

  1. #1
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188

    Slow Computer?

    If you type that into Google you will get several million hits (411,000,000 to be precise).

    Lots of these will link you to oceans of snake oil products that claim to solve all your woes with the click of a mouse button?

    All I have to say about that is:

    1. Fools and their money are soon parted
    2. If it were that easy, wouldn't the OEMs have included it, given how much of their profits are taken by help desk functions?

    Anyways, on to what I wanted to start this thread with...............

    How do you know that your computer is running slow, or slower than it did?

    I have just acquired a 22" FST widescreen HD monitor. I hooked it up to my general purpose machine and was not pleased with the compatibility.

    I replaced the old PC with one booting Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. That seemed to accept the monitor, loaded its management software and work just fine.

    I set up the old 4:3 17" FST screen attached to the original PC right next to the new one. The old PC has Windows XP Home, and had loaded all the new screen software when I tried it on that.

    After a couple of days, the XP box seems to be running slowly...........noticeably so.

    Well I guess I know the reason:

    PROCESSOR: 1.8GHz Single Core Athlon 2200+ (256KB L2 cache)
    RAM: 1GB DDR1 266MHz Single Channel
    VIDEO: Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB RAM
    HDD: Western Digital 120GB 7,200rpm PATA

    AGAINST:

    PROCESSOR: 3.3GHz Quad Core Phenom II BE (4x512KB L2 cache)
    RAM: 4GB DDR2 1066MHz Dual Channel
    VIDEO: Radeon HD5670 512MB VDDR5 RAM
    HDD: Samsung 1000GB 7,200rpm SATA II

    My point is that your perception of these things is based on your experience, so if something happens to change your experience (new computer at work, new laptop etc.) then your perception will change along with it.

    I just thought that I would mention this as I have had several people complain to me that their PC had started to "run slow" when that didn't seem to be the case. They had just had first hand experience of something more modern and faster.

    So don't go buying people snake oil for Christmas


    .

  2. #2
    Administrator Steve R Jones's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    390
    Half way into reading your thread I started think the exact same thing.

    Often times you don't realize how fast a pc is untill you use a slower one.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Info_Au's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Melbourne
    Posts
    273
    Download speeds for Pron are the same on both computers.

    What does it matter....lol

  4. #4
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    Download speeds for Pron are the same on both computers.
    Indeed! but I am sure that you will have noticed that the newer machine has a 1000GB HDD as opposed to 120GB .................. and the playback is a lot faster

    EDIT:

    We have an old Dell Dimension 8100 in the corner of this room. It runs Windows 2000 and supports legacy hardware and software, in particular a flatbed scanner, laser printer, and MS Office 2002 (XP) which are mostly used by my wife. She has commented several times that it is "running slower", although I am unable to detect this or think of any reason. The hardware is static and Office is not being updated. I put it down to the fact that she has mostly been using Office 2010 Professional Plus on an AMD Athlon 2.1GHz Dual Core laptop with 3GB DDR2/800 RAM, running Windows 7 Home Premium.
    Last edited by nihil; December 11th, 2011 at 04:33 PM.

  5. #5
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Israel
    Posts
    1,683
    Never actually thought about it like this Nihil , +1 for this .
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  6. #6
    Senior Member Info_Au's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Melbourne
    Posts
    273
    80 gig drive here.
    That filled up in 2001.
    Since then its been a battle to burn as fast as d/l's.

    Now i have 1 terrabyte external drive.
    Still running the same system since 2004 approx.

    When it gets slow it gets formatted.
    Celeron 2.20Gig...224mb of ram. Win XP ProSP3
    Sony 16x cd writer from yr 2000 that has churned out some 1000's of disks.
    Sony could be impressed its still going strong..lol

    I find this runs as fast as the wife's Azus 2010 laptop with Vista on it.

  7. #7
    HYBR|D
    Guest
    224mb ram

    I've got an old creative CD burner that still works perfectly. It's out lasted numerous reader/burners... Unfortunatly they dont build things to last in this day in age.

    The only problem is that now i've got brand new equipment, and the box PC motherboard doesn't even have IDE connectors. it's all sata plugs. So it's been relegated to the cupboard to retire.
    Last edited by HYBR|D; December 12th, 2011 at 02:59 PM.

  8. #8
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    224mb ram
    224 + 32 onboard video = 256

    A couple of years ago I did a database development for a local company. The design and development I did offsite, but the implementation and UA testing had to be done onsite.

    I was given a Celeron 667MHz with 128MB of SD RAM. 32MB of that was taken by the onboard video. The OS was Windows XP Pro.

    Now that did run in a "slightly leisurely" fashion.

    @ Info_Au,

    If I were you mate, I would make sure that I had a backup replacement for that 80GB drive, and an extra stick of RAM.

    As for Vista.................... that one is a law unto itself, it seems to work OK on some hardware platforms and badly on others. I would look to replace it with Windows 8 next Christmas.

    The public Beta test version is due out the back end of February 2012 so you can try before you buy.

    From a user viewpoint it is just an improved edition of Windows 7, but there are internal differences, such as the 350MB hidden partition.................

    Cheers,
    Last edited by nihil; December 13th, 2011 at 09:55 AM.

  9. #9
    THE Bastard Sys***** dinowuff's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Third planet from the Sun
    Posts
    1,253
    sysmon for *NIX and Performance Monitor for Windows. (sysmon will work on MAC's)

    I use the tools at DNSSTUFF for internet speed testing (not just the free speed test) and tracert / ping for networking. (Used from switch-router (hops) to computer))
    09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0

  10. #10
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    Hi there dino~, howzyakeepin?...........long time no see

    Have you got a link for "Performance Monitor" that you mean? I know that if I Google I will get millions of hits on the subject matter.

    Seasonal greets,


Similar Threads

  1. Ethical Hacker Certification
    By apollovega in forum Newbie Security Questions
    Replies: 41
    Last Post: July 29th, 2004, 04:21 AM
  2. Computer Support --- Feeling a bit dumb today ??
    By Agent_Steal in forum Tech Humor
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: November 6th, 2003, 07:18 PM
  3. hacker being
    By Anatra in forum AntiOnline's General Chit Chat
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: March 31st, 2003, 12:48 PM
  4. Replies: 1
    Last Post: July 15th, 2002, 03:46 AM
  5. The Worlds Longest Thread!
    By Noble Hamlet in forum AntiOnline's General Chit Chat
    Replies: 1100
    Last Post: March 17th, 2002, 09:38 AM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •