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Chrysalis · 01-05-2011, 15:35

my sister gave me her laptop to sort out it had a few issues.

1 - mega slow for bootup and general use, hdd permanently on.
2 - very poor internet speeds isp virgin media.

The laptop has the bundled vista on it and a gig of ram, to make things worse the graphics card also uses 256mb ram for itself and it cannot be tuned in bios to a lower amount. I have installed win7 home premium on it one of my technet licenses and most of the performance issues are now relieved although its still clearly ram saturated. New ram is ordered and an extra 2 gig will go in next week when it arrives. Now regarding the internet speed I tested it on my wireless and it maxed out at 20mbit flatlined, just to make sure I repeated the test and also tested on my pc and laptop, both of mine were 30mbit. Looking at device manager shows her laptop is indeed only wireless G, so I have concluded there is a 20mbit limit on that to my wireless router, I plan to repeat the test to my dir615 wireless as thats the router my sister has at home. However she was also complaining of speeds jumping up and down and stalling at 0 for periods of time, thats the same symptons I had when I was on docsis1 legacy network so the problems could also be VM side for her but is possible I guess if her wireless channel has interference it could have the same symptons. Either way she has been advised to get hold of a wireless N dongle and when she gets the laptop back I plan to test her connection over ethernet. Probably will also take my laptop there and test with that also. So in her case long story short I hit a 20mbit cap on G. Mine on N at 30mbit does get affected the speed is a bit shaky and occasionally dips if I speedtest but for the most part it can sustain 30mbit.

My laptop ironically is a lower spec cpu and hdd than hers. But as it turns out I got a better wireless interface N vs G, the hdd is noticebly less sluggish even tho its smaller, and my graphics card doesnt steal any ram so they managed to give me one that has its own memory. Hers feels like they sorted the cpu out to improve the spec most people look at but the rest of it was built cheap. Both laptops fairly old, we got at the same time free with phone contracts. The difference been tho her bottlenecks are easier to solve, a dongle fixes the wireless and ram should sort out slow hdd grinding, whilst mine is a cpu limitation.

01-05-2011, 15:35	#2122
Chrysalis Inactive Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 12,047	Re: [Update] ALL 20>30Mb upgrade discussion my sister gave me her laptop to sort out it had a few issues. 1 - mega slow for bootup and general use, hdd permanently on. 2 - very poor internet speeds isp virgin media. The laptop has the bundled vista on it and a gig of ram, to make things worse the graphics card also uses 256mb ram for itself and it cannot be tuned in bios to a lower amount. I have installed win7 home premium on it one of my technet licenses and most of the performance issues are now relieved although its still clearly ram saturated. New ram is ordered and an extra 2 gig will go in next week when it arrives. Now regarding the internet speed I tested it on my wireless and it maxed out at 20mbit flatlined, just to make sure I repeated the test and also tested on my pc and laptop, both of mine were 30mbit. Looking at device manager shows her laptop is indeed only wireless G, so I have concluded there is a 20mbit limit on that to my wireless router, I plan to repeat the test to my dir615 wireless as thats the router my sister has at home. However she was also complaining of speeds jumping up and down and stalling at 0 for periods of time, thats the same symptons I had when I was on docsis1 legacy network so the problems could also be VM side for her but is possible I guess if her wireless channel has interference it could have the same symptons. Either way she has been advised to get hold of a wireless N dongle and when she gets the laptop back I plan to test her connection over ethernet. Probably will also take my laptop there and test with that also. So in her case long story short I hit a 20mbit cap on G. Mine on N at 30mbit does get affected the speed is a bit shaky and occasionally dips if I speedtest but for the most part it can sustain 30mbit. My laptop ironically is a lower spec cpu and hdd than hers. But as it turns out I got a better wireless interface N vs G, the hdd is noticebly less sluggish even tho its smaller, and my graphics card doesnt steal any ram so they managed to give me one that has its own memory. Hers feels like they sorted the cpu out to improve the spec most people look at but the rest of it was built cheap. Both laptops fairly old, we got at the same time free with phone contracts. The difference been tho her bottlenecks are easier to solve, a dongle fixes the wireless and ram should sort out slow hdd grinding, whilst mine is a cpu limitation.