# Vista Laptop Advice



## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Evening all, just been to see my grandad to drop off his birthday present (a week late - I am such a bad grandson







).

Shunning the usual socks and hankie (_does_ anyone ever buy their grandad presents that sh1te?), I got him a cheapo Lexmark printer, as he bought himself a laptop a couple of months ago.

He has bought an Acer Aspire3690 (Celeron M with 512MB RAM) running Vista Basic.

It is painfully slow. Startup and shutdown take forever.

The spec says it all, and I obviously can't do anything about the Celeron, but will a memory upgrade actually help and to what degree? Processor currently runs at 50 - 70% doing simple tasks, and memory barely drops below 85%.

I can get 2GB from Crucial for just over Â£50.00 + delivery, but will he see that much of an improvement, if I do? (I added 2GB to my ageing P4 desktop a couple of months ago, but I can't say it's that much faster.)

His lappy looks to be running about 75 services and five or six of those appear to relate to Acer software ('e technology'?) that starts automatically.

Is it safe/advisable to disable or set them to manual start-up? (Or do Acer configure their machines to rely on that software?) It appears to include some security stuff, including folder encryption that he'll never need.

Oh, and in case you were interested he was 91 last Saturday (and no, this isn't a wind up and you wouldn't know it if you saw or spoke to him).

He only wants the laptop for email, the news and, most importantly racing. Any good links anyone?


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

It may be better to get a copy of Windows XP and another 512Mb of memory instead of using Vista? That's what I'd be tempted to do.


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

I concur with Stan, I hear Vista is very resourse hungry


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

Vista Basic is a lousy user experience and Vista could really do with a minium of 1GB to run. Vista Home Premium is a better experience, but on my laptop I'm using Vista Business with 2Gb of RAM.

In the search box at the bottom of the start menu, type "msconfig" and look under the "startup tab" this will show you a list of the start up programs. With a bit of research on the 'net can turn off a few things that will improve matter.

Also check he's only running one set of AV software and restore point is turned off. If Norton Ghost is installed that needs removing as that will hog system resources too

HTH


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

I agree with strange_too. Vista needs at least 1GB of RAM to run at a decent pace, so I'd go for the memory upgrade first and take it from there.


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## colinryan (Jul 8, 2007)

I take it he's no computer expert (not to be a prick, but most people of that generation aren't).

I had exactly the same problem with my grandfather's computer earlier in the year. Not particularly great computer, cursed with a shitty version of XP (Home Edition), crashed constantly, virus and spyware magnet.

To remedy that, I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu Linux and put it on. If all your grandad needs is www/email access and print the occasional thing, it'll work nicely. Stable, doesn't need a ton of memory (his Celeron M with 512Mb RAM worksjust fine) and is easy to use. And of course, you don't have to worry about viruses.

The installer is very easy to do, it will recognise all your hardware.

www.ubuntu.com. I can't recommend it highly enough.


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Thanks for sharing your knowledge guys.

If I'd got to the machine earlier, I'd have swapped the OS to XP, so I could support it for him.

Unfortunately, he's had a couple of months feeling his way round Vista Basic, so I think changing it now may turn him off.

In terms of AntiVirus software, I don't think he even had any!! He got a free trial of Norton with BT Option 1, but I think that had either expired, or didn't include AV at all? Vista couldn't see any, and I couldn't find any.

Downloaded Google Pack so at least he now has Norton AntiVirus and a spyware killer too. His machine was clean, thankfully.

I'm not familiar with Norton Ghost, what is it and where should I look for it? (I use Norton Internet Security, don't recognise Ghost as a product name though.) Will do a web-search, but any pointers greatfully received.

Colinryan, no offence taken etc. His only previous computer experience was a hand-me-down PC from me with Windows 98 on it. My Nan was going downhill around then, and I'd moved away so he never had the time to try it out.

Learning ubuntu is an iminent project for me, have downloaded the CD image but haven't got round to trying it.

Think I'll take the plunge and order the memory and have a dig around in the services to see what I can kill.

Wish he'd called me at the time. Everyone else in the family just seems to have rolled their eyes.


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Ahh, Ghost.

Nope, not Norton, but he has something similar that shipped with the laptop. Throws up an annoying popup telling him to create a backup DVD at start up.

Think I saw that it has a scheduler service. Do you reckon it's a safe bet to kill it? (Set it to manual?)

If it was XP, I'd get stuck in. Vista is uncharted teritory for me though.


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## colinryan (Jul 8, 2007)

You should really give some consideration to putting Ububtu on it. My grandad also was more familiar with XP but even he said he found "this new thing" easier to understand.


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Hmm, it won't hurt to burn a disk, I suppose.

If he takes to it, I can do an install. Might force me to learn it myself.

Can it be run completely from the GUI (without any command-line interaction)? He'll never handle it if he has to use the command line.

Oh, and can it reside with Vista, or do I have to reformat and change the disk to FAT32? I'd imagine it's NTFS at the moment?


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## colinryan (Jul 8, 2007)

There is absolutely no need for any CLI action on his part (and even on your part) whatsoever.

If the disk is NTFS, you cannot switch it back to FAT32.


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

Who. Me? said:


> Ahh, Ghost.
> 
> Nope, not Norton, but he has something similar that shipped with the laptop. Throws up an annoying popup telling him to create a backup DVD at start up.
> 
> ...


Did it come with a system (vista) disk or do you have to create the disk yourself? That's what it could be asking you.

If it's got a scheduled back up utility (like Ghost) just kill it, that's probably the thing that's causing the most problem. From what your GD does on it, it's more important he can use it rather than having his data backed up.

You can't do much wrong with Vista, it's pretty similar to XP.


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

This might help too

http://www.thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=24368


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Thanks Colinryan and Strange_too.

Strange - He said that he has the backup disks, but I'll want to see them with my own eyes before I disable the backup utility though. I'm going to take him a spare box of DVD-Rs anyhow.

Col - I've read that I can reformat an NTFS disk to FAT32 with the old Windows fdisk app. Want to do this on my home system anyhow, as I'm planning to recycle an old HDD to mess around with Ubuntu, and maybe other flavours later. I've been meaning to learn my way around Linux and Ubuntu seems the best way in.

I read on the Ubuntu forum that twin-disk-dual-boot systems only work if Ubuntu is installed on a FAT32 disk, so I'll need to reformat my old disk to FAT32. Fdisk seems to be the simplest way, albeit that I'll need to create lots of partitions. Must get round to 'borrowing' an old Win98 CD from work.


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

Not a problem.

Try here for a boot disk


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## thunderbolt (May 19, 2007)

Who. Me? said:


> Evening all, just been to see my grandad to drop off his birthday present (a week late - I am such a bad grandson
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Have a look here. These changes have speeded mine up a fair bit. My laptop is currently on "BV's Current Config." Change all the services marked with a " * " .


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

strange_too said:


> Not a problem.
> 
> Try here for a boot disk










Great link! Sometimes the internet is brill (My god, 'brill'. How old am I??).

Thunder; thanks, I logged in from my Grandad's yesterday and had a look at that thread. His Vista is as per the BV defaults for Vista Basic; aside from the addition all the crud tools/applications that Acer have also put on there.

Am probably going to go and see him again on Thurs (I am on hols all next week ) ), so I'll let this thread lie before it annoys anyone (it's not a Vista forum, y'know














).

Thanks all. You've been a great help.


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

To be honest you can most likely kill off most the acer crap.

Things like Adobe Reader, Real, Quicktime etc pre loading can be turned off too.

If he doesn't use messenger, than can be turned off.

You said you've installed something from Google. That will phone home all the time and use a lot of resources too.


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## chris l (Aug 5, 2005)

We're still trialling Vista for corporate use; consensus thus far is that as much RAM as possible is good!

512minimum. 1GB better, 2GB it all works!

For free AV software; AVG.


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## limey (Aug 24, 2006)

Wasn't going to comment... but I will









Advice so far is sound, more RAM will improve the experience. I set up a 2 man network for a friend, both brand new Acer's, one desktop, one laptop. Each had only 512MB. After much screwing around and 2 weeks of struggling, they upgraded each to 2GB.

Nite and day difference. The laptop was able to print to the large format plotter for the first time. Same deal, too much Acer crap loading out of the box. Go ahead and use msconfig to turn the stuff off, if you find something doesn't work it's just a checkbox to turn it back on.


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## bluespot (Aug 18, 2007)

I think a clean install of the Vista or Xp if possible with just the minimun needed, More memory for Vista or Xp will help. A fast Hard Disk ie big size helped my old Toshiba. Be carefull with Ubuntu boot disk on laptops, on my newish dell it's not controlling the system fan properly according to those who know such things.


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Hi

Just a note to say thanks re your advice above. I bought 2GB RAM in the end and went to fit it yesterday.

Kept away from changing the OS, as he's familiar with the Vista layout now, so it would just confuse him more.

Found that the laptop also has a fault, in that it only recognises an SODIMM in one of its two memory slots, so it has to go back for repair/replacement.

In the mean time, I left him with 1GB RAM and even that has made a huge difference. Apps actually open when launched, rather than waiting a week then struggling open.

Took all the Acer bloatware off of the laptop as well and that helped.

Thanks again.

Andy


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