Should i upgrade??

[cyberyder]

Hey Everyone!
I've got this laptop i've been using since 9.04
(http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/notebooks/0,39001743,39094254p,00.htm). Pentium M 1.74, 512mo Ram.
It has been going great. however 10.10 is draining all the power from my laptop. It get sluggish as hell, therefore sad.

So i was looking to upgrade some part of it. and i was thinking adding a 1gb of ram. Would the ram make a great difference?

Thanks a lot!

[fabricator4]

So i was looking to upgrade some part of it. and i was thinking adding a 1gb of ram. Would the ram make a great difference?


Hi, yes upgrading to 1 Gb of Ram will make a difference. I've got 10.04 LTS on some of my computers and I see a difference between 512 Mb and 1 Gb.

It's also not a very expensive upgrade these days, provided that RAM for you laptop is readily available.

Chris

[Rsjc741]

512Mb of ram will make a large difference for you, like he said.
The battery life problem you talked about seems to be a common problem for all users of that laptop.
I couldn't imagine Ubuntu having as much strain on the battery as Windows XP.. so it should be helping you, not hurting you.

Edit:
Maybe your battery needs to be replaced? If its dying in a relativly short period of time, it could be at the end of its use.

[pi/roman]

The ram should help but, to add another angle, the age of the laptop should also be considered. I have a couple old laptops that are the same model and nearly identical and have about the same specs as yours both with 512m ram. The one runs fairly well while the other is sluggish like yours and even has trouble just playing video in full screen. At one time it did run well but things wear out and sometimes the computer doesn't just die all at once. It may soon be time to replace it so you may not want to dish out any cash on memory.

[ekjsim]

Maybe its the HDD. I found that after some time, the performance of the HDD would reduce.

[cyberyder]

With your comments, i realise that maybe the problem might come from HDD. considering the cost of 35$ for one 1gb of ram - its worth the try. if that doesnt work i don't really see myself changing the hdd. might be too expensive for nothing.

Ok i'll buy this ram and check it out.

Thanks to all

[cascade9]

HDDs might slow down a tiny amount over time, but not much (unless its well on its way to borked).

More RAM would help, if your using gnome, but you could get a similar effect to more RAM by changing to a lighter DE. I'd try installing xfce (NOT xubuntu) and try logging into that before you go buying RAM, HDDs, etc). Lxde would be worth a try as well.

Changing to a lighter DE might help battery life as well.

[mastablasta]

i use 10.04. switched the theme to clearlooks, removed the background picture and set desktop effects to none. uses about 120MB on boot works nicely with 224MB RAM. batery life is now longer than under winXP.

another option really is xfce or lxde.