How much memory?

theCzar

How much memory should a laptop running WinXP and Norton Security Pro 2005 need?

I'm trying to speed up a 2Ghz Celeron laptop which has really started to flag. I've discovered it possesses a fairly paltry amount of memory (190Mb). Everything runs, but you really don't want to hold your breath while you wait.

I've disabled a million startup items so now when I ctrl-alt-delete to look at the taskmanager, with no other programs running, it's still using 190MB, any other programs opened drive this figure further up, and into virtual memory which I infer is the problem since virtual memory is effectively just using the HD and a hundred times slower.

Does this seem a reasonable hypothosis? The laptop is 2 years old and i figure increasing the memory by 512mb or so would be an easy upgrade to make it useful. It's only used for word processing and email/internet.

mukki

theCzar wrote:

How much memory should a laptop running WinXP and Norton Security Pro 2005 need?

I'm trying to speed up a 2Ghz Celeron laptop which has really started to flag. I've discovered it possesses a fairly paltry amount of memory (190Mb). Everything runs, but you really don't want to hold your breath while you wait.

I've disabled a million startup items so now when I ctrl-alt-delete to look at the taskmanager, with no other programs running, it's still using 190MB, any other programs opened drive this figure further up, and into virtual memory which I infer is the problem since virtual memory is effectively just using the HD and a hundred times slower.

Does this seem a reasonable hypothosis? The laptop is 2 years old and i figure increasing the memory by 512mb or so would be an easy upgrade to make it useful. It's only used for word processing and email/internet.

you really need 256 for xp, going further above 256mb makes little difference to the normal user
dont worry about using virtual memory, it usually ditched the unused info there first, if it takes a few secs to switch between open programs (ie word and i.e.) then you need more memory, or remove the unnessary that are using the memory that you have

you should uninstall norton internet security, its a complete waste of any pc


laptops have very slow hard drives, usually 5400rpm, and sometimes only 4200rpm, if you want a good speed boost, get a 7200rpm drive, more memory, then install xp and avg or norton antivirus corporate, or any of the others recommended by the guys here

Oriel

I'd recommend a reformat and an upgrade to at least 512Mb. If you do a lot of mulit-tasking, I'd go for more if you can afford it.

S.

Saruman

Internet security is probably your problem right there... combined with the fact its only a celeron, not much mem (512 at least!!!) and laptops are a LOT slower than PC's... unless you have a fast hard drive 7200rpm etc

Anyway ANYTHING Norton is an absolute memory hog!!!

Lets put it this way, open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) go to performance and see how much mem is being used.. if its more than your actual ram then you are using hard drive page file... like i said 512 min!!

Clinical Waste

The low L2 cache of the Celeron will always be a bit of a performance hinderance also.

pclancy

Remove Norton and add at least another 256Mb. Happy Days.

hobie

Remove Norton and add at least another 256Mb. Happy Days.

but do ensure you replace it with something that covers you for Firewall .... Antivirus .... Spyware and Adware or memory will be the least of your problems ....

hobie

I'm just looking at a Dell 1300 which is the entry level for Big 'D' Laptops and it's shipping now with a 1.60GHz Celeron M and 512MB as standard ..... :rolleyes:

Sounds like 512MB might be the way to go .....