Why isn't my uncle's new computer that fast?

[jasondefaoite]

that takes me to task manager?

 

Or Crtl+Shift+Esc, then startup tab

 

 

FYI, that startup tab does not show on Windows 7 or older if you use that hotkey.

 

Yup, but the TS said the system was running on Windows 8.

[Krome]

Yes.  I need to re-affirm that you need SSD drive to make that PC faster

 

750GB (5400 RPM) SATA Hard Drive <-- that is the crappy hardware that slows down your uncle's PC.

 

Look at these.. - http://amzn.com/B007VPGJIY and  http://amzn.com/B003FW9T0M for example, they are 10k 2.5" drives in a 3.5 adapter/casing

God dang those Velociraptor is goddam cheap!!  I remember a 200-300GB Velociraptor was around 500$-600$ the last time I look.  That was when SSD was not even on the market yet.

 

[timster]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the RAM. while 2GB is a good enough amount for a current OS's, you may want to consider increasing it to at least 4GB and possibly migrating from Windows Vista to Windows 7

 not needed. i failed to read the entire first post.

 

oh, and ofc run Ccleaner every so often to clean temp files from the system. Defragging doesn't hurt either, I use Defraggler from Piriform (same company that does Ccleaner)

[123456789A]

I'd run a test on the hard drive and make sure it's good. Also check the temps to make sure it's not overheating. I had a laptop running really slow because it had temp issues.

[greenwizard88]

Can you describe "not fast"? Because if he's running Vista SP2 on a modern CPU with a good HDD, and it's not bogged down by a severe lack of memory or malware, he's likely not going to notice any difference between Vista and Windows 8. Really, the bottleneck these days (and in the past few years) is the hard drive.

 

Heck, the only difference between my MBP from 2006 and my girlfriends' MBP from 2013 is the application loading times, but once Safari starts up they're both just as fast.

[daorbed9]

Does anyone other than WD even produce 2.5" drives that are 7200rpms anymore? Seems to be that market died awhile ago.

 

It's because it doesn't make nearly the performance difference a lot of people think it does.  Now that laptop drives exceed 120MBs the read and write speeds help make up any speed lose from latency.  Also the computer caches nearly everything once its loaded and very few small files will be called from the drive except for temp internet files.  A good deal of those end up in ram as well.

 

But yes most people have it right, its crapware.  Unfortunately to completely remove it you would need to do a clean install.  I wouldn't use any brand name laptop with the OS installed from the factory.  The business lines used to leave a lot of this out, but its not true anymore.  Lenovo can be the worst and their business line is one of the best there is.

[+virtorio MVC]

SSD + Fresh Windows Install = Fast

[(Account no longer active)]

What antivirus software did the laptop come with? Norton, McAfee, Avast? If one of the latter, uninstall it and install Avira Free Antivirus: http://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus Avira is one of the most efficient AVs available.

 

I'd also remove all (Desktop-based) programs you don't need - here's instructions on how to do this in Windows 8 (no third party software required): http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/uninstall-change-program Post a screenshot of the installed programs if you need help with choosing what to remove.

[DaDude]

I just checked. His old pc's HD was 5400 rpm, just like the new PC. I guess that's why there's no speed difference.

I checked Dell's site and all their Inspiron laptops have 5400 hard drives. In order to get something faster, you'll need a desktop and my uncle refuses to get those because of their size. He likes the compactness of a laptop.

[Praetor]

I've been seen a lot of this lately: some old PC's with XP can be, apparently, faster than newer ones; this is due to several things: old PC had faster hardware (faster HDD, faster RAM and faster CPU) and those newer PC's have crap HDD, sluggish RAM and slow CPU; also the quantity of bloatware in newer PCs can slow the OS considerably, so that's another thing to look after (still don't know why OEMs prefer to inject crap load of bloatware only to have consumers view them in a negative way).

 

I would also benchmark the old one and the new one, so you can see exactly what's slowing the computer (in your view).

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

It's because it doesn't make nearly the performance difference a lot of people think it does.  Now that laptop drives exceed 120MBs the read and write speeds help make up any speed lose from latency.  Also the computer caches nearly everything once its loaded and very few small files will be called from the drive except for temp internet files.  A good deal of those end up in ram as well.

...

I'm not really sure where you got the statistic of 120MB/s sequential read/write speeds for <7200rpm drives, but I didn't see that when I just looked briefly at benchmarks for laptop drives currently sold on newegg.

 

Regarding caching, already running programs are cached into RAM and files you already have open can be cached completely into RAM, but those two things are on demand. There is superfetch in more modern versions of Windows but that only caches commonly used programs. It doesn't mean any old file or program access is generally cached. It wouldn't be anywhere near everything.

I just checked. His old pc's HD was 5400 rpm, just like the new PC. I guess that's why there's no speed difference.

I checked Dell's site and all their Inspiron laptops have 5400 hard drives. In order to get something faster, you'll need a desktop and my uncle refuses to get those because of their size. He likes the compactness of a laptop.

Of course, there's always dropping an SSD instead. I would never run my laptop without one (if only so I can toss it around without causing issues ;-) )

[sc302 Veteran]

I just checked. His old pc's HD was 5400 rpm, just like the new PC. I guess that's why there's no speed difference.

I checked Dell's site and all their Inspiron laptops have 5400 hard drives. In order to get something faster, you'll need a desktop and my uncle refuses to get those because of their size. He likes the compactness of a laptop.

If he wants noticeably faster, do what everyone (well almost everyone) is suggesting.  Get a SSD in there.  It will increase program load times as well as windows boot up times.  If he wanted fast off the get go, a ultrabook in the 1000 range would have been good.  A acer s3 or a lenovo x1 carbon are two examples of such laptops.  Also don't be afraid of the microsoft surface, unless he isn't looking for something that small. 

[Vvo]

scrap vista, too slow and obsolete. 

[Chris123NT]

If you really want it to be that fast you need to put an SSD in the machine.  The hard drive is the slowest component in the machine, thus slowing everything else down.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

scrap vista, too slow and obsolete. 

I'm guessing you didn't fully read the post. The old laptop had Windows Vista and the new one has Windows 8.

 

Anyway, boot time will be significantly reduced with a SSD. A 5400 RPM is very slow in comparison.

[xrobwx71]

This is an awesome program that shows all including even the size balls the HD has.

 

https://www.neowin.net/news/hwinfo-434-build-2130

[philcruicks]

I just checked. His old pc's HD was 5400 rpm, just like the new PC. I guess that's why there's no speed difference.

I checked Dell's site and all their Inspiron laptops have 5400 hard drives. In order to get something faster, you'll need a desktop and my uncle refuses to get those because of their size. He likes the compactness of a laptop.

You don't need a desktop you need an SSD (all SSD's are 2.5" so will fit a laptop), everything else in that laptop is fine, HDD speeds have been the bottleneck for most computer devices for the past many years, thats why most top end laptops and desktops come with SSD's now.

If you don't want to shell out on an SSD as they can be expensive, look at a hybrid drive or SSHD (Seatage  Momentus XT) or something similar, these have a lump of flash memory in them like an SSD but its only 8 or 16GB most of the time, just enough for Windows and your common progs, music and pics vids etc...will all be stored on the spinning part, the drive will manage itself so don't worry about it showing as 2 separate drives or anything like that.

 

 

If he wants noticeably faster, do what everyone (well almost everyone) is suggesting.  Get a SSD in there.  It will increase program load times as well as windows boot up times.  If he wanted fast off the get go, a ultrabook in the 1000 range would have been good.  A acer s3 or a lenovo x1 carbon are two examples of such laptops.  Also don't be afraid of the microsoft surface, unless he isn't looking for something that small. 

Note to OP, I'm sure sc302 actually means the Surface Pro, there is a very big difference between surface and surface pro, make sure you look at pro if you went this route.

[technord]

I guess not many people have recently bought a dell laptop.  There's minimal bloatware on them now.

 

It's almost certainly down to the slow HDD.  Replace it with an SSD and put the original one in a USB3 caddy for backup/storage

[Praetor]

I guess not many people have recently bought a dell laptop.  There's minimal bloatware on them now.

 

It's almost certainly down to the slow HDD.  Replace it with an SSD and put the original one in a USB3 caddy for backup/storage

or replace the DVD (if it has) with the drive.

[TAZMINATOR]

I just checked. His old pc's HD was 5400 rpm, just like the new PC. I guess that's why there's no speed difference.

I checked Dell's site and all their Inspiron laptops have 5400 hard drives. In order to get something faster, you'll need a desktop and my uncle refuses to get those because of their size. He likes the compactness of a laptop.

 

You can get a hard drive that has 7200rpm and place it in his laptop... it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Once you install 8 on it and you will need to contact MS for a replacement key for the laptop if you are not able to activate it on new hard drive.

[Praetor]

Once you install 8 on it and you will need to contact MS for a replacement key for the laptop if you are not able to activate it on new hard drive.

 

Why is that? the key is in the UEFI...

 

anyways: OP is there any new development?

[TAZMINATOR]

Why is that? the key is in the UEFI...

 

anyways: OP is there any new development?

 

It won't work..

 

I tried to swap the hard drive for new hard drive which it has more space and I installed a fresh installation of Windows.. it prompted me to enter the key and I was told that it is being used...  So I got another key from MS for it.

 

If it does not prompt him to enter a new key, then he's lucky.

[Praetor]

It won't work..

 

I tried to swap the hard drive for new hard drive which it has more space and I installed a fresh installation of Windows.. it prompted me to enter the key and I was told that it is being used...  So I got another key from MS for it.

 

If it does not prompt him to enter a new key, then he's lucky.

 

i don't get it: you swapped the old drive for a new one, installed Windows 8 (and i assume it's the same installation that you used on the old drive) and when doing the activation you couldn't because it was being used? How did you had the key in the first place since the key is in the UEFI?

[TAZMINATOR]

The first time installation.. i entered the key so the installation started... No problem.

 

and later, I got a new hard drive, I try to install Windows 8 but it asked me to use a new key.. So I called MS for it.

 

That's why.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

The first time installation.. i entered the key so the installation started... No problem.

 

and later, I got a new hard drive, I try to install Windows 8 but it asked me to use a new key.. So I called MS for it.

 

That's why.

The point he was trying to make is that if your Laptop came with an OEM license for 8/8.1, it shouldn't ask you to enter a key during install, it should just grab it automatically from the SLIC tables in the bios (stored there by the manufacturer). Sounds to me like yours wasn't stored there since you had to enter it externally.