pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

my dad just bought an ~750mhz laptop with 256mb of ram and is running windows 2000 on it.

we already looked into getting some more ram, but it's discontinued and hella expensive.

he bought it basically for web browsing, so what can he/we download/change/remove to make just simple web browsing as fast as possible?

thanks!

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

Please do not take offense to the following comments.

Your dad just bought a piece of electronics that is not good for much of anything besides maybe a boat anchor.lol Seriously, what you've found out about the expensive RAM is the whole problem. It's too old to upgrade because the parts are too expensive and with an old sloooow processor and very little RAM, what you see is what you get for the most part.

I'd say for web browsing, it's about as fast as it's gonna get. I'd advise disabling most everything you can from starting up automatically. In XP that can be done by going to Start > Run > MSCONFIG. I think MSCONFIG is an option in 2000 too.

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

You can disable all nonessential services too.

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

[ QUOTE ]
my dad just bought an ~750mhz laptop with 256mb of ram and is running windows 2000 on it.

we already looked into getting some more ram, but it's discontinued and hella expensive.

he bought it basically for web browsing, so what can he/we download/change/remove to make just simple web browsing as fast as possible?

thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]
wow, exact same specs as my laptop [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] you'll have a hard time upgrading the ram (max is probably 512 anyway, so no point). Anyway, like others have said you can disable all nonessential services, but the most important part is to not install needless crud. ie don't install multiple IM clients and other crud you don't need.

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

Wow, I don't think I've said this since college, but:

"You can put Linux on that."

Honestly, if you just want a machine that can browse and email, it might be a good bet. Do you have any linux experience?

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

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Wow, I don't think I've said this since college, but:

"You can put Linux on that."

Honestly, if you just want a machine that can browse and email, it might be a good bet. Do you have any linux experience?

[/ QUOTE ]
If he wanted to do that his best course of action would be install xubuntu. There really isn't a speed benefit, they'll both run firefox at the same speed. Although running linux would safeguard him from malicious email.

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

First thing I thought was install Linux. With Ubuntu the OS is pretty streamlined and only installs extra stuff if and when you want it. In other words, you wouldn't really need to go and disable anything that is nonessential because for the basic installation it is pretty much strictly the essential components. Ubuntu tends to have its own viral protection, but outside of Windows this isn't such a big deal anyhow.

But yeah, screw Windows on that machine, hook up Ubuntu!

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

windows 98?

Re: pops just bought an old ass laptop, i want to help
 

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windows 98?

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Windows 2000 is already installed. I see no point to installing 98. You people are seriously forgetting that this thing used to be top of the line shiny with Windows 2000. I'd still install xubunutu, but mostly because I'm a geek.