Lighter alternatives to common software for an old laptop

[DarkTXKnight]

I recently loaded Win 7 on an old latoptop for my wife ( HP n610c, 1.8 Ghz Mobile processor 1GB Ram, 80 GB HDD) as a project to just do some light computing on. Surprisingly it runs pretty snappy, but Id like to know what are lighter running (faster) alternatives to some common softwarre? I have heard of switching from IE to Firefox and maybe adobe acrobat to foxit, but what else exits? We want to use it for internet, music and maybe some photo touchups when we travel so that we leave the expensive work laptops at home. Yes I know I can buy a netbook, but Id like to see what I can do with this little guy here since it's already owned
Has anyone done anything similar?

 

[lxskllr]

VLC and Foobar2000 for media

Chrome's quicker than Firefox, but I prefer Firefox.

You already mentioned Foxit reader.

... Not sure about the rest. Depends on what you want. Do any of your other standard apps feel slow?

 

[Chapbass]

Hmmm, does openoffice run lighter than standard office? Guess I've never really looked.

+1 for VLC. I'd also say Firefox with plugins, I would imagine Firefox + adblock is faster than chrome (on sites with ads, etc), but I dont have any evidence to back it up.

Honestly you'll get more performance out of that laptop than you will with a netbook, I would think. Maybe a tad bit slower, but if that processor is an old pentium m...hell, I did more than what you were describing on an old p3 766mhz and 384mb ram. Id stick with it and see how it goes

 

[0roo0roo]

firefox+flashblock!!!!

if you ever catch a deal on an ssd, that speeds up laptops like nothing else. $100-130 hot deals can be found. and only getting better

 

[sivart]

puppylinux...but that would be another forum

 

[DarkTXKnight]

do SSDs have an IDE or SATA interface? That sounds like an interesting option. Ive already thought that this would be more powerful than a netbook, just not as cute or small ( wife's words) though this is smaller than our workhorses.And yes its a pentium m 1.8.
Ive jsut been loading it up today for our trip and so far nothing is really all that pokey. So what can I use for some light photo editing? We are going on a cruise next week and I want to take this laptop to use with the camera stuff instead of the other laptops. Also are there any sites that go through tweaking firefox etc?Also what shall I use for Antivirus software?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Chrome
Sumatra is lighter than Foxit for PDFs
Paint.NET for image editing
Definitely VLC for media
Open Office is a resource hog, no better than MS Office. Use Wordpad for basic document work.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

how compatible is chrome with various banking and other web sites?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

It's fine for every site I use regularly.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

do SSDs have an IDE or SATA interface? That sounds like an interesting option. Ive already thought that this would be more powerful than a netbook, just not as cute or small ( wife's words) though this is smaller than our workhorses.And yes its a pentium m 1.8.

Most (if not all) use SATA, purely because of the wider bandwidth.

Ive jsut been loading it up today for our trip and so far nothing is really all that pokey. So what can I use for some light photo editing? We are going on a cruise next week and I want to take this laptop to use with the camera stuff instead of the other laptops. Also are there any sites that go through tweaking firefox etc?Also what shall I use for Antivirus software?

For the photos, you could try PhotoFiltre (I think that's how it's spelled). It's nothing as full-featured as photoshop or GIMP, and it's not really meant for photo editing, but it may or may not be what you want. Otherwise, the Microsoft Office photo editor is pretty decent too.

Open Office is a resource hog, no better than MS Office. Use Wordpad for basic document work.

You could try Google Docs on Chrome.

 

[limer]

Multimedia
VLC

PDF Reader
Sumatra PDF

Word Processor
Abiword