Help me speed up my laptop..

Why pro? I thought you only get bit locker and other unnecessary things with it?

Yes on not doing upgrade.. Do a clean install.
You will want to boot from CD, then delete all partitiions and set a partition for 20 GB or 1030 times 20 i think for megabytes and install 7 on that.

 

Linux Mint is an operating system. You just download an ISO image and burn it. You can boot it up and try it out before actually installing anything. That way you'll get to see what works and what doesn't. Most of the time things just work.

 

Rub cheetah blood on the processor. Cheetah blood speeds up everything.

 

I wouldn't waste throwing money at that laptop. Put it towards a new one and move on. My laptop is running a AMD quad core processor and 6 gigs of RAM with a 300gb hdd and I didn't pay over 400 bucks for it. You will be close to the cost of a new laptop with all of the upgrades and you will still be stuck with an outdated mobo and a Celeron single core processor.

 

Exactly same as installing a windows OS which the OP wants. Refer to previous posts about upgrading the LT.

 

I vote same as your IT guy. Never do an update when updating the OS. First off the "anytime updates" are the same price as a new OS and if you have any bugs it does not resolve them. Delete the partion (once backed up) reformat the drive and reinstall fresh. Simple really.

 

I work in IT. This is the correct answer.

 

If you have $600+. OP doesn't have it. He wants to rehab this one.

 

try setting up a new user-on older computers-it has worked for me.
Just a thought.

 

With all due respect, it sounds like you may not be as savvy as you should be when it comes to Linux on today's desktop. No way anyone has to spend "hours dicking with it" to make things work! Years ago, sure. But just 20 years ago Linux was just getting started! Today, with a cutting edge OS like Linux Mint, no way!!! You just install it and it works flawlessly right from the start on most anything you want to run it on!

Simply download the Mint .ISO file you want to try out, burn it to a disk, reboot to that disk and the Mint operating system will run live from the DVD you've booted to allowing you to check it out prior to installation. Then, if you decide to install it, it will set itself up alongside your Windows installation if that's what you want and you can choose which OS, Linux Mint or Windows, you want to use on boot up.


My Linux Mint 14 OS running the Mate desktop...

And no Replica, LOL!, I don't "work for Linux Mint"!! Just a long time Mint user, 2006 to 2013, who's stuck his finger in almost every desktop Linux distro that's ever been offered, and who finds, as do legions of others, that when it comes to install it and everything just works, properly configured from the get go, Linux Mint's desktop OS offerings are next door to bullet proof and nearly impossible to beat!

 

I run two linux servers tyvm. If you want to do anything business wise linux is not your desktop (Half the programs I run can not be run on linux). I'm really glad you can open a browser but I'm not interested nor is the OP. Fact is that's not what the OP wants so you can argue your linux vs. windows all you want but end of day its just your opinion. Thanks!

 

Tell me a couple of the programs you run "business wise" that you can't run on Linux. I'd honestly like to know.

There are solutions, both in Wine as well as in VM's, that allow Windows specific programs to run in the more secure desktop environment that Linux provides. There may be some programs that don't play well with these Linux based solutions, but I've yet to find a need for a dedicated Windows box for what I do -- which includes a LOT more than just simply browsing as you can see if you look closely at my Docky menu at the top of the screen.

Still, I'd really like to know specifically what program or programs you can't run on a well configured Linux desktop.

As far as the OP's concern for his old slow laptop, Linux Mint would give it a whole new lease on life, ..which is after all what he's after isn't it.....


The evolution of Linux illustrated graphically over the past 20 years...

 

Not to butt in to your linux vs windows discussion..

But just got off the phone with dell. I purchased my computer in May 2013, and purchased no additional warranty other than what came from dell with purchase of it. (I bought it from Bestbuy).

Whenever I plug headphones in, a static/radio sound is always on. Always the quality of audio is tinny sounding. They tried a few things, drivers and what not and they couldn't get it to sound right. (I had already tried those, but they have to do them their selves so I get free warranty work basically.

They are going to send out a Dell Tech within next 2-3 business days to my house and replace the motherboard free of charge to me. No charge unless they see I have cracks or damage to my computer which I don't. That is what I call a good company who stands behind their product.

 

just reinstall windows and be done with it. Also i do IT as well.

 

Lurked here a bit and decided to try Linux Mint on my netbook. It's got an ATOM N550 CPU and 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 is pretty doggy on it. It is functional with Windows 7, more so than it was with XP, but just kinda slow, especially when you first wake it up and it has everything paged out. All it is used for is web browsing and occasionally listening to music.

I am also in IT, and I have been like Linzy for a long time -- I have installed Linux several times over the years (starting with Slackware floppy images downloaded through Compuserve, circa 1992), and my experience has never been that "it just works." There have always been drivers missing or that don't work, problems getting programs to install and work correctly, etc. Different distros are configured differently, blah blah blah. Too much of a pain. Apps that do work are basically functional but not very polished.

Anyway, once again I had an "experience" trying to install Mint. Maybe not Mint's fault here, but once again not a smooth experience. First off, a netbook doesn't have a DVD drive. No big deal, just unpack the files from the iso and install from there. Nope, no worky, install runs for a bit and then just disappears, no errors, nothing. No problem, let's boot from a USB drive -- used YUMI to create a bootable USB from the iso. For some reason, my netbook BIOS has a setting for that but doesn't actually boot from USB. Rat farts. OK, well, let's see if we can find any info on the web. Hmm, looks like the install MUST be run from the DVD image for it to work. WTF? Oh well, get a Windows utility for mounting an iso as a drive, and voila, the Windows install method finally works!

Now I have to say that I am impressed. All hardware appears to be functioning properly, including sound. Netbook seems pretty snappy now. I did have to add an NTP package just to get it to sync time with internet time, which I thought was a little silly. And I added Chrome since that is what I am used to now. Haven't had time to do much else since the install took so dang long.

But yeah, OP, ditch Vista and either go with a clean install of Win 7 or try something like Mint. Don't throw money at a notebook computer.

 

Ditch Vista and install Xubuntu

 

Getting things set up so you could actually do the installation was the hard part on your Netbook. Once you made it to the top of that hill installing Mint sounds like it was pretty much the slam dunk it should be.

I've installed Mint on a couple of personal laptops that don't have CD/DVD drives attached. The first was an older Lenovo X61s sub-notebook with a dual core 1.6 Ghz processor, 4 GB ram and a 500 GB hard drive. Got it with Windows 7 on it and immediately set out to rectify that situation! Used Unetbootin to burn Linux Mint's 2013 Debian Edition (LMDE) ISO file to a USB flash drive. Set the boot order in the BIOS to boot from the USB device. From there the installation took just minutes to complete. The second was a fairly new ASUS Zenbook Ultrabook. I cheated on it and plugged in an external CD/DVD drive to do the installation from a DVD I'd previously burned using the LMDE ISO. Once again everything went according to plan with the installation taking just minutes. Both of these installations have run flawlessly from day one, everything on each machine working as it should from the start.

Like you and Linzy I've played with Linux in various configurations from the early days when it took sheer determination and a lot of patience to get a desktop system configured so it was even somewhat usable. When Ubuntu appeared in 2005 offering their "Linux for Humans" distros, that it seems to me was the point where desktop Linux began to find real traction. I still have my original Ubuntu two disk set of install disks from that year, disks that all you had to do was request and they'd send them to you ready to go free of charge.

The following year, 2006, Linux Mint rode in on Ubuntu and Debian's coat tails with a markedly improved version of Ubuntu's version of Debian. Slowly but surely word spread that Mint was what people were calling "Ubuntu Done Right." Things went Ubuntu's way up till they decided to beat Microsoft's infamously ill received "Metro" touch screen interface to the punch, coming out with their own equally ill received "Unity" interface in 2010.

From that point on Linux Mint, which opted to stay with the traditional windows, icons, menus, pointer (WIMP) interface that had grown to maturity as the Gnome 2.30 desktop environment, slowly caught Ubuntu on the way to becoming the go to "Everything Just Works" Linux desktop OS for those in the know. For the past couple of years Mint has pulled steadily ahead in numbers of users opting for its traditionally sane desktop environment approach as opposed to the far less popular Unity interface that Ubuntu has tried rather unsuccessfully to saddle its users with.

As Magog notes, Ubuntu can be had with desktop interfaces other than Unity. So it seems at this point that peripheral interfaces used by Ubuntu satellite projects, interfaces such as KDE, Xfce, Lxde and the like, are doing much of the heavy lifting for Ubuntu since Unity still isn't widely accepted by users.

And yeah, like Rich says OP, ..never throw money at a laptop computer! Set it up to run the best it can given its capabilities and limitations. If downloading, installing and running a cutting edge Linux Mint desktop OS is part of that equation, than you'll have maximized the machine you have and it'll serve you as well as it possibly can for a long time to come!

 

Yep, it was completely painless once I got it started. Dang Asus EeePC's are a little quirky, but pretty solid netbooks. This one is just the man-cave coffee table unit.

I do have to say I was impressed that everything worked, this being a somewhat obscure configuration.

 

I was reading this thread until I came across Az4x4's signature then I forgot what I was reading about.

 

Pretty sure you're working for them... Or work in advertising maybe...