thrashing performance out of a laptop

[ikonia]

hi guys.

a while ago I gave someone my old IBM thinkpad T22 laptop, its served me well for years and I found it robust and never really caused me a problem, however I got a new laptop so gave it to someone in need.

I must admit looking at it now, it is starting to get a little sluggish and perhaps a little dated.

When I had it I upped the ram to the maximum size (512) so I think its pretty much upgraded as far is its going to go (it has a 900 mhz p3 that shows up as 896mhz under windows

My question is is there any tips and tricks or even upgrades I can do within reason that will get a little more grunt out of this laptop to help the person using it work a little better.

I've done the basics

ram - now at maximum
Hard disk defragged
stopped all unneeded services except the XP style thing which I'm agruing with stopping.
There is a 20 gig disk in it which is hardly used so I've made a static 2 gig page file (instead of dynamic)
Its running a fully patches SP2 XP build

any OS tips or tricks (windows version of pre-empting or caching for example)
or I'd even consider a few hardware tweeks if needed.

other wise its time to get a new laptop

thanks for the tips

[Nick F]

Take away all the special effects that come with Windows and make the theme the basic one. That should help a little bit.

Looks like you have done everything else really.

[ikonia]

I thought as much.

Once interesting point which I've just noticed is the use profile for the new laptop own is 1.9 gig (mainly because of the my documents)

This seems very high to me, in that this needs to be "loaded" and maintained. I'd be interested in thoughts on that.

[Nick F]

Make sure you desktop is clear of large files as well because that slows things down.

[ikonia]

what about a link to a set of large files outside the desktop

so eg: a shortcut to c:\fatfiles on the desktop

the files are not on the desktop but they are accessible from the desktop ?

would that slow things down ?

[Rabs]

Upgrade the harddisk to a 5400RPM model - the Seagate Momentus series is excellent. I replaced a dying IBM (spit) 20GB 4200RPM harddisk out of a P3 1Ghz laptop with a 40GB Momentus - it was a different machine! So much better

In addition (as mentioned above) - increasing the ram will also help.

[ikonia]

hit the threshhold of the ram, no more room for expansion

[suryad]

Hard disk upgrade would be great...more memory also...these two are first and foremost and cost money...but another tweak you can do that wont cost money is nLite...I cannot recommend it enough!!! It will result in a bloat free XP setup that is light on memory as well.

[joshwa]

regcleaner, (google: regcleaner)
disk cleanup,
disk scan (to check for any bad sectors / hard drive / file problems)
uninstall any unneeded programs,
check how many fonts you have,
check your startup folder (if you haven't already)

[ikonia]

your comments on fonts is interesting.

are fonts loaded at boot time ?

[Nick F]

your comments on fonts is interesting.

are fonts loaded at boot time ?

I am pretty sure they are not loaded at boot but they do take a large amount of space in the system files.