Why is my laptop so slow?

Question

I recently purchased 512mb of RAM for my hp pavilion ze5600 (Intel (R) Celeron (R) CPU 2.60 GHz it currently holds 706 of RAM. after I installed 512 mb card i notice little or no speed change when opening programs or files. I have McAfee virus scan installed as well as anti spyware software. I run these daily, but it seems my laptop does not run as fast as it should with all the RAM in it. My computer is fully updated as well (windows xp). Please help, I appreciate any feedback, thanks!

Answer 1

Your laptop is slow because its processor is weak and the memory is just not good enough.


I would advise getting a new laptop from dell. Your laptop specification is very weak. Intel celeron. wow! Get a laptop with at least a core duo processor, at least 1gb ram and an ati or nvidia video card. Windows Vista is here and your laptop cannot even pinch it talkless or running it.

Answer 2

If I'm understanding you. You originally had one 256MB RAM module and a second 512MB Ram module. So you replaced the 256MB RAM module with a 512MB module, thus making the total amount of installed RAM 1GB. Is this correct?

There is a huge misconcetion on RAM. Just as there is with hard disk space and deleting programs. I got best answer on a simlar question and what I wrote is below. But basically RAM only provides a larger operating space for you to run multiple and large programs at the same time without affecting system performance.

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears
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RAM, Processors, and Hard Disk Storage are among the most common misunderstood components of a computer; by end users. People often state that RAM makes a computer faster which is not necessarily the correct explanation.

The Playing Field
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Think of a park or playing field. If you have a very small field you can only have a few activities going on at the same time. If you try to overload the field with more activities, what happens? Everything slows down. RAM is exactly the same, it is space for activities in the computer to work.

RAM and Memory
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Now RAM is classified as Memory and there are two types in a computer. Physical RAM which is an actual integrated circuit board inside of your computer and Virtual RAM. Virtual RAM performs the same function as Physical RAM, but is slower. This is because the computer uses part of your hard disk to function just like Physical RAM.

Access Times for Physical and Virtual RAM
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Access time for Virtual RAM is about 8/1000th of a second while access time for Physical RAM is about 5/100,000th of a second. Now this may seem fast in our world but in the computer world 8/1000th of a second is slow.

Does the Computer become faster by adding more Physical RAM?
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The answer is, all computers have a performance mark called a benchmark. When you increase the amount of Physical RAM you do three things:

1. Bringing the computer closer to its maximum benchmark
2. Allow more activities too occur at the same time
3. Allow single larger activities to occur without affecting the performance of the computer

Answer to your question
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So the reason why you are not seeing a performance increase is that in your situation you have created the condition where you can have more applications running at the same time without affecting the current performance of your computer.

Answer 3

New laptops typically come with a CRAP load of freebie and trial software loaded on it. Go to add/remove programs and get rid of some stuff you don't want.

Also, go to start | run | type "msconfig" | and go to the Startup tab. Unclick any programs that you don't need to start when you boot up.

That should help.