IS MY COMPUTER OBSOLETE????

[Purple Materia]

Just because it came with the computer, doesn't mean it's any good. I personally use NOD32; it's probably not the best but I love it.

I also disabled some features in the Visual Effects of XP. Helped alot.

 

[TheAppleFreak]

There's not a lot to it. Making sure that no services/programs that don't need to be there are loading on startup. A lightweight AV/other software also goes a long way. Eg, most browsers are obese these days. Even Chrome. Something like K-Meleon would be wonderful if it looked a little better.

So many people have installs of XP (partially because it's older, partially because it's less secure than Vista/7) that run like crap because they have all sorts of mess installed. Don't get me started on Virus infections. "But it's okay, I was using Norton. My uncle's vet says it's really good because it came with their computer." Wrong. Many of the popular AVs, in practise, are useless. Norton, McAfee, Trend, all bloated horrible crap. I'd also like to point out that CA Antivirus is potentially the most disgusting piece of software I have ever seen running. MSE and Avira are very light and effective. Oh, and they're both free and more effective than the big two.

That reminds me. OEM preinstalled software is usually bloatware. Toshiba, Sony, HP, MSI are the biggest culprits of this. Lenovo, Dell and Asus generally aren't too bad. Although Asus is hit and miss.

Printer "helpers" are a big one. They sit in the tray and suck memory for the once a month that you might scan something in without doing it the proper way (via the Printers and Scanner menu). This also only applies to Vista and 7, but the desktop gadgets are horribly bloated. Google's are even worse. Don't just no choose any, disable them.

It's even worse for stuff you can't easily remove. My mom used to use Norton and later F-Prot antivirus on her Windows 2000 machine (she has a new W7 machine, thank god), and those would bring it to its knees when they started up. It was even worse back when it ran ME; they ate up inordinate amounts of RAM and didn't do anything to stem the flow of a major virus infection she got (which is why she moved to 2000). Eventually, the program's subscriptions expired, but they kept starting up and became bloatware which only annoyed her.

When she got a new machine earlier this year, it had so much stuff on it that she'd never use. There was facial tracking software for login stuff, password managers, trials for programs that she'd never need, even one that acted as adware! Ugh. She had a trial for McAfee which bogged down the normally fast machine until it rivaled the speed of the Win2000 machine. All of it was deleted.


I think the reason why some of these programs are so bloated is because individually, the devs know the program won't take up too much space and power. When the OEMs begin stacking them, though, that's when it gets bad.

 

[Archer]

Just because it came with the computer, doesn't mean it's any good. I personally use NOD32; it's probably not the best but I love it.

I also disabled some features in the Visual Effects of XP. Helped alot.

If it's one of the newer versions (ie. not the really old free one), then it's basically the best there is.

It's even worse for stuff you can't easily remove. My mom used to use Norton and later F-Prot antivirus on her Windows 2000 machine (she has a new W7 machine, thank god), and those would bring it to its knees when they started up. It was even worse back when it ran ME; they ate up inordinate amounts of RAM and didn't do anything to stem the flow of a major virus infection she got (which is why she moved to 2000). Eventually, the program's subscriptions expired, but they kept starting up and became bloatware which only annoyed her.

When she got a new machine earlier this year, it had so much stuff on it that she'd never use. There was facial tracking software for login stuff, password managers, trials for programs that she'd never need, even one that acted as adware! Ugh. She had a trial for McAfee which bogged down the normally fast machine until it rivaled the speed of the Win2000 machine. All of it was deleted.


I think the reason why some of these programs are so bloated is because individually, the devs know the program won't take up too much space and power. When the OEMs begin stacking them, though, that's when it gets bad.

Was it a Dell? I think all of these companies should stop being so heroic and just do a bare install of Windows with the option to install an anti-virus. It really is horrible.

 

[TheAppleFreak]

Was it a Dell? I think all of these companies should stop being so heroic and just do a bare install of Windows with the option to install an anti-virus. It really is horrible.

No, it was Lenovo. With a Dell, they would have at least sent me an OEM reinstall disk so I could wipe/do a fresh install. With Lenovo, they put a "restore" partition on the disk which brings it back to the default factory state when you activate some process. Ugh.

The Win2000 machine was a Dell, though. It has since been beaten to death with a hammer, torn to pieces and threw into a fire retired and now sits in a landfill.

 

[Dawn]

You can't "future-proof" computers

Yes, you can. Let me remind you that future proofing a computer is simply getting more than you currently can make use of with the knowledge that as the computer ages it will allow the computer to last longer without needing to be upgraded or replaced.

See, if you actually look at the specs of that computer you'll see it lacks the power to run anything past XP. XP is so old that it predates the age where 64 bit became viable.

and I wouldn't say there are that many ways you can use such a computer where adding over, say 2GB of RAM is the answer to a performance issue.

You would be horribly, horribly mistaken. When Microsoft went from XP to Vista the hardware requirement of RAM had a major increase. Other pieces of hardware? Not so much. That being said, increasing your RAM from a decade old standard too low to run even four year old Operating Systems can do incredible things for your computer.

 

[Purple Materia]

You would be horribly, horribly mistaken. When Microsoft went from XP to Vista the hardware requirement of RAM had a major increase. Other pieces of hardware? Not so much. That being said, increasing your RAM from a decade old standard too low to run even four year old Operating Systems can do incredible things for your computer.

XP's RAM requirement was 64MB for the minimum. Vista requires 512MB. That's a huge difference. Just saying.
But yeah, I had a really old computer for awhile that ran XP on 512MB. I upgraded it to 1GB and the difference was astounding. I don't use it anymore though, thank god.

 

[Archer]

Yes, you can. Let me remind you that future proofing a computer is simply getting more than you currently can make use of with the knowledge that as the computer ages it will allow the computer to last longer without needing to be upgraded or replaced.

I think you ignored the most important part of what he had to say:

Eventually you're going to hit performance problems that can't be resolved by adding more RAM

What most of us have been trying to get at is sure, adding up to 2GB ram will help the situation, but any more and you are throwing money at something that is obsolete. At some point you're going to realise, "Oh, my CPU can't keep up with programs/games and I can't upgrade my graphics card because the in-built power supply can't be swapped out." It's almost always better to work with lower-end, but newer components. They're newer, cooler, more efficient and most importantly, able to be upgraded far past what the old system could. I agree that 2GB ram will help. Anything else, however is a waste.

Other pieces of hardware? Not so much. That being said, increasing your RAM from a decade old standard too low to run even four year old Operating Systems can do incredible things for your computer.

The CPUs were largely left alone because a 800MHz Pentium III will run Vista, but it's not going to be pretty. In fact, it will also run on 256MB SDRAM, but again, it won't be pretty. The fact that Microsoft didn't update the minimum CPU is just their naivety. They neglected to realise that the programs that will be running under computers now (read: XP is no different) need a decent spec CPU to keep things going smoothly. Ever wondered why a Pentium 4 with 2GB ram still runs like crap? The CPU is slow. Don't get me wrong, the CPU on the OP's machine is still okay for the time being. It's fine for web browsing, office work and even a bit of simple graphics stuff here and there, but it won't be long before it's just not going to cut it.

Netburst is dead. Everyone is better off. End of story.