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Thread: Revamping my netbook

  1. #1
    Get to da choppa Million's Avatar
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    Revamping my netbook

    Hi all,
    I have an acer aspire one ao751h which is a few years old now, and is painfully slow. It has:
    Processor 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520
    Memory 1GB, 533MHz DDR2
    Hard drive 160GB 5,400rpm
    Chipset Intel SCH US15W
    Graphics Mobile Intel GMA 500 (integrated)
    I've upgraded to 2gb of RAM, and it's running Win7 Pro (which I'm sure doesn't help). I did try to get a linux OS on it but failed, and i've never used linux before.

    What I'm wondering is what I can do to spruce it up a bit. Would an SSD make a difference? Which OS would you put on it?
    Thanks in advance,
    Max

  2. #2
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: Revamping my netbook

    An SSD would make a difference, but is it worth it for an aging netbook? With a 1.3GHz Atom Z it's never going to be particularly fast. An SSD would give it an all-round snappier feel (assuming it'll take a standard 2.5" sata drive, of course) and would set you back around £60 for a 120GB - is it worth that much to you? Might be worth considering whether it's time for a new laptop...

  3. #3
    Bagnaj97
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    Re: Revamping my netbook

    If it will take a standard sata ssd then I'd say it's worth doing. Sure it's an old netbook, but if you don't skimp on the SSD it'll probably be an upgrade for your netbook's eventual replacement.

    Other than an SSD I don't think there's much more you can do to speed things up.

  4. #4
    Goron goron Kumagoro's Avatar
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    Re: Revamping my netbook

    Setfsb worked on the wife's old atom netbook it was stable at 1.8ghz and okay at 1.9 if you didn't constantly stress it so surfing was okay. You just need to Google your model to find the correct pll.

    I also used gma booster but I don't know if out applies to yours
    Last edited by Kumagoro; 13-12-2012 at 04:45 PM.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Pob255's Avatar
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    Re: Revamping my netbook

    A couple of things on these old atom netbooks

    1- keep it clean, you need to be mercenary about minimising background processes and services.
    That's why I nlite'd xp when I put xp on my netbook (asus eeepc 901, the first netbook to use the atom cpu)

    2- light Anti-virus, a lot of av software has got bloated and can really slow stuff down.
    personally I'm using avast! free version as it's got one of the smallest resource demands (both ram and cpu threads but also watch out for effect on disk access)

    3- flash blocker, keep you browser slim, this is fast becoming a major issue as more and more cpu demanding flash and html5 is appearing on everyday websites.
    I'm using opera with "enable plug-ins only on demand" ticked, that way I can still access flash and such content, I just have to manually click it each time any page loads.

    GMAbooster a program that lets you remove the underclocking from the onboard gpu might help you

    An SSD could well help, don't worry too much about getting something fast as it'll only run at sata2 speeds, you can still run a sata3 ssd in a sata2 port so no worries there, just don't pay extra for something super fast.

    something like this should be fine http://www.scan.co.uk/products/64gb-...-7200-iops-max without being massively expensive

  6. #6
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    Re: Revamping my netbook

    Your only upgrade choice is an SSD, but I honestly wouldn't bother with something like that. The CPU is fundamentally too slow, and there's nothing you can do about that.

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