Why is wife's computer slow...

ordered and we will see how it goes.. in mean time ill try some of the other stuff.

 

Why does IE suck so much... mine keeps closing and reopening tabs

 

Well at least that's something I would recommend for that combo.

 

I doubt that with Windows XP she is using all of her ram while she's just surfing the net. Then again, I don't have the computer in front of me and I cannot see what she is running on it.
So the usual things that it can be is basicaly what everyone else has said. Not having enough ram, which can be cured by just adding in some more. Or your hard drive is running out of space. That is one thing that people don't account for, is that your HD is running low on space which causes the hard drive arm to take longer to reach certain places or it can even be both which I am guessing it is.

Do a disk cleanup, and defrag the hard drive. (both can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours)

 

Download Google Chrome. Much faster.

 

10.42 download... 5.84 upload god or bad?

where to clear cache?

ordered 2GB Ram upgrade

 

Open the browser to clear the cache.

For explorer - Click Tools, internet options, Browsing history section -delete button, another window pops Then delete files, cookies,etc
Your internet isn't the problem. It is the hardware that is the problem. Also install Google chrome & use that as the browser. For anti-virus use Microsoft security essentials it is free & won't slow the PC like most anti virus programs.

Another thing is get rid of desktop icons. If the screen is full of icons they use up memory.

 

if this is in Mbps, ..then yes that is plenty fast... try the other things in my previous post, ..unless you have more info.. also i'm assuming your HDD has at least 15% free space?

 

ram upgrade to 2GB or (even better ) to 3GB will be a big improvement since windows hogs a lot of memory... might consider increasing the page file size, ...and (even better) move the paging file to either another HDD partition or to a secondary drive (i.e. get it off the same HDD the OS is installed on)

 

TweakXP

Good DIY XP Performance tips.

 

Yup, netbooks are slow. There is a program called CCleaner I run once a week that is more thorough for cleaning off the residual junk, and it's a free download. Another thing people over look is don't just close it, shut it down. Gives it a chance to close background processes and clean up some loose ends.

 

on a scale of 1-10 on how good of a laptop that is, its about a 2. Speed of web pages loading really has nothing to do with how fast the CPU is though. That'll depend on the speed of your internet. The wireless in her laptop is probably slow itself.

 

Try linux?

 

A 1.66Ghz Atom processor + 1GB RAM should be fine for Net surfing.

Try installing Google Chrome and see if it loads pages faster. I'm guessing her default browser is bogged down by addons.

https://www.google.com/chrome

 

disk defrag, clean up and switch to chrome and its already running better