Computer upgrade question

[baz5]

Hello,
I have a Sony Vaio for about 3 years now. Very happy with it, runs very well. Seems to be a little slow sometimes, but in general not too bad.

It's a P4 2.4GHz
256M of Ram.

You figure if I added another 256Megs of ram it would speed it up?
256 is pretty low for today? no?

If not, any other suggestions to upgrade it a bit? I dont know much about computers.

[akito925]

I'd would just add another stick of 512 or 1 gig of ram ontop of it.. 256 and 512 just almost the same price.. from 512 to 1 gig is not too much in increase in price.. your processor is pretty beefy as in power, works fine.. my p4 2.6ghz works just great still! runs eveything I need it to do.

Hello,
I have a Sony Vaio for about 3 years now. Very happy with it, runs very well. Seems to be a little slow sometimes, but in general not too bad.

It's a P4 2.4GHz
256M of Ram.

You figure if I added another 256Megs of ram it would speed it up?
256 is pretty low for today? no?

If not, any other suggestions to upgrade it a bit? I dont know much about computers.

[willy]

Yup, go right ahead to add another stick of 512MB and you will love the 'new' speed (assuming you are running W2K or higher) :!:

[baz5]

Great, thanks a lot.
Today was the first time I checked what I had in years, and was surprised it was only 256.
Thx again.

[baz5]

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13410BD0797&vpn=PSD5124003&manufacture=PATRIOT
This one look like a good deal?

[Deimos]

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13410BD0797&vpn=PSD5124003&manufacture=PATRIOT
This one look like a good deal?

Yup that should work fine with your system.

However, before you jump to the store, please make sure that more memory will really help at all.

Examples:
1. make sure windows is not loading dozens of programs at boot time. start->run->type in "msconfig"->click on the startup tab
2. make sure you dont have many extrenous applications in the "system tray"- the icons in the bottom right beside the time. They are all running concurrently and bogging down the system, especially anti-virus, MSN etc.
3. Probably spent a long time surfing. Cleanup junk on your computer. In internet explorer, from the menu "tools", internet options, and delete temporary internet files. Might also go over the hard drive and clean up old temporary files, documents, videos, etc.
4. have you defragmented recently? Right click "My Computer", select manage, and then choose "disk defragmenter". Defragment will take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Your computer might be a mess.
5. Is the computer acting strangely? Unusual pauses. Eratic behaviour. Perhaps you have viruses, spyware, adware, malware, worms, etc. Get a good AntiVirus program like Norton.
6. If all else fails, you can just backup all your important documents and wipe the slate clean by formating the hard drive, and reinstalling everything from scratch.

Now, all these suggestions assume that your computer responded more quickly before and has recently bogged down.

BEST WAY TO CHECK IF YOU NEED BIGGER SWAP/PAGE FILE OR MORE MEMORY.
1. Boot up computer and open task manager. (right click taskbar and task manager, or Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select task manager.)
2. Click on Performance tab and you can see important info on memory usage.
3. Run the typical programs that you dont like how they slow down the computer. MSN. Microsoft Word. FireFox. Some games whatever.
4. After opening each program, check the task manager. The Memory Usage History shows how much total memory is being used. 199 000 means 199MB. If this number gets significantly higher than 256MB, then you'll be hearing a lot of hard drive clicking and grinding noises. Hard drive is like 1000x times slower than memory and best used at minimum.
5. In the bottom left, the "Limit" number shold be much bigger than 256MB, because this includes the swap file. If the "Peak" gets close to the "Limit" you should increase the size of the swap file. At least 100-200MB more than the Limit.

Example: I am playing Battlefield2 (which uses HUGE amounts of memory). I have 1 GB of memory. So in Task Manager it shows Physical Memory Total as 1048048 = 1048MB = 1GB. While playing the game, I leave Task Manager open in the background. After a few minutes I ALT+TAB and check memory usage. In the bottom left, the Commit Charge peak is something like 1328000=1328MB=1.3GB. The total is slightly lower but right up there... total is what is being used currently, peak is max used ever while computer was on. While playing BF2, its using more memory than I have physically by simulating memory with a file on the hard drive. My swap file is 350MB, so the Commit Charge limit is 1352000=1352MB=1.35GB. Since the peak is so close to the limit, in such a scenario it is good to increase the limit by either buying more memory or increasing the size of the swap file. But which?
Well, if you hear the hard drive clicking and grinding all the time while running the program (Battleifield 2 in this case), then you MUST buy more memory to resolve the problem. Larger swap file will not fix it. However in my case, 1GB of that 1.3GB is using real physical memory, and remaining 0.3GB is being accessed of the hard drive. Since its not being used often. It barely impacts game performance. I rarely hear hard drive accessing. So the amount of physica memory is acceptable.

I hope that simple explanantion helps!!

[baz5]

Thanks.
Yeah I usually clean up all the crap at the bottom right. I edited startup before to remove some of the crap on startup.

I don' tknow what half the stuff is either.