Disable Aero vs Disable theme service altogether

[Fallingwater]

I've just installed Win7 x86 on a netbook. Said netbook (Acer Aspire one A0571h) has one of those awful, awful 1.3GHz Z520 Atoms that even ordinary N270 Atoms laugh at, and a similarly awful GMA500 video adapter that I've just discovered is a *shudder* PowerVR product.

Obviously, it's imperative that I slim the system down as much as possible in order for it to work with any semblance of speed. This requires disabling all the eye candy.

Question is: which is better - disabling Aero by switching the "personalize" option to "windows classic", or disabling the Themes service altogether from the admin menu? I'd think the second option might free up some more resources, but you never know...

The win98-style interface you get with Themes disabled is perfectly fine for the netbook's owner, and if it isn't fine she'll just have to accept it anyway.

(Yes, she's paying me. Not enough that she can dictate what goes on the computer though. 😛)

 

[lxskllr]

Just switch it to basic. Turning off services doesn't do much.

 

[corkyg]

Windows Classic imposes less graphic processing - your best bet. Aero is nothing but eye candy anyway - adds little or nothing to functionality.

 

[Fallingwater]

I've read this and now I'm not sure what to do.

Edit: no way, no how. I've given it a try with Aero turned on, and it's about as fluid as Crysis on a 3Dfx.

Edit, again: I've tried it with the Windows classic theme and with the service disabled entirely, and it's a bit faster (or should I say less horribly slow) with the service turned off altogether.

 

[JackMDS]

Disabling services is No a good idea. Sooner or later something else that might dependent on the service would crash and you would spend days not understanding what going on.

Put 2GB RAM and disable Aero and you would Not feel a difference.



😎

 

[fire400]

1.3GHz Z520 ... wow

have you thought about linux?

 

[kmmatney]

I beliee that the "Classic" theme uses less resources than the "Basic" them, so it should work better. I like the fact that the classic mode also turns off font smoothing as well.

 

[Lorne]

After running both modes its a toss up, I use some of the older graphic editing programs and find that with aero off some things are faster and that screen image integrity like menus, buttons and the image i am working on hold.
With aero on other funtions are faster and the screen refresh is faster but find that some menus, buttons or the images I am working with dissapear and have to click various parts of the screen to get them to pop back up.

I am also having an issue where other windows that have been brought to the front dont move to the back again when clicking into another app, eg. clicking into Photoshop after bringing a filemanger to the front, The file manager window stays upfront and I can still edit on Photoshop including typing text behind the window, I have to click the titlebar to get the filemanager to drop back behind it.