Dell 600M seems sluggish

[BeauJangles]

Hey guys,

My girlfriend just got a new Dell 600m for college and I'm here setting some stuff up for her (you know, winamp, MS Office, etc). Anyway, the laptop seems sluggish. The GUI operates very smoothly, going to the start menu and navigating through things works fine. But it seems to hang sometimes when loading IE or My computer or other folders. Sometimes it can take up to 10 or 15 seconds. Maybe I'm used to my 2.4C in my desktop, but this still seems quite sluggish for a 600m.

Here are the specs, btw:

1.3 ghz Mobile p4
384 MB RAM
40 gig HDD
blah blah standard centrino config.

 

[BeauJangles]

Oh, Im installing all the windows update right now and they downloaded off MS's site pretty fast. They are installing now, and it's been about 5 minutes and I'm still less than 1/2 way done. I seem to recall that it took 30 seconds or so once they were downloaded on my machine.


Anyway thanks for the help!

 

[kayatai]

tried the usual xp/laptop performance boosts?

disable indexing
defrag the hard drive
set power profile to max performance
check for virus
check for spyware
defrag the hard drive again...

512 ram?

the hdd is probably onlye 4200 rpm, which should cause it to be a little less zippy, but not like you are describing.

 

[BeauJangles]

I'm going to try using it plugged in and see what happens. As for the rest, the HDD doesn't need defragging and it definately isn't the RPM of the hard drive. I've used lappies with slower drives that have been much more responsive.

 

[John]

Run msconfig to disable all startup items and non-microsoft services.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

windows update takes forever to install once downloaded. About 10 -15 minutes on my 3ghz machine.

 

[BeauJangles]

Well guys, Windows update was slow as hell, some other stuff was slow but it seems MUCH MUCH better when it's plugged in. Actually, after a few tweaks, it's running like a dream. So I have to give props to kayatai for suggesting to check power management which prompted me to plug it in.

 

[kayatai]

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
Well guys, Windows update was slow as hell, some other stuff was slow but it seems MUCH MUCH better when it's plugged in. Actually, after a few tweaks, it's running like a dream. So I have to give props to kayatai for suggesting to check power management which prompted me to plug it in.

woo, glad to help.
if you set the power management to max performance, or always on, it should run the same as being plugged in all the time (that's how I use it) and you really don't loose that much battery life IMO.

 

[Broohaha]

where do you set power to max???

 

[kayatai]

left click on the battery or ac power icon, a list should appear. if you set it to always on, or home/office desk it should set you to run the cpu at full speed all the time.