Uncle! OK, OK, I give in!
When I recently resurrected the Langa.Com site, and started working again with the old Windows Secrets gang over at AskWoody.com, I assumed my current laptop would be up to the task. After all, it had served me well for the last few years.
I was wrong.
It’s not an obviously underpowered PC — a mainstream, brand-name laptop
running Win10 on a Core i7 CPU with 8GB of RAM. It’s not a new system, but over the years, I’ve upgraded its original spinning-platter HDD with a half-terabyte SSD; added 10TB of external local storage; and replaced the keyboard.
The specs seem OK, and the system is well-maintained (junk file removal, drive optimizing/defragging, registry cleaning, etc.), so why is it now sluggish?
I took my own advice about diagnosing system bottlenecks: I kept Task Manager open on my desktop, and watched the system respond as I went about my tasks.
Too often, when the PC was obviously laboring under my new workload — laggy, with the cooling fan whining away at top speed — I’d see graphs like this:
Clearly, the system has become RAM-starved: Almost the entire 8GB is in use, with only a tiny bit left open for system use.
The CPU isn’t quite in crisis, but it’s working pretty hard. With that much RAM in use, it’s a safe bet that a good chunk of the indicated CPU activity is actually busywork, as Windows is frantically swapping overflow code and data between physical RAM and virtual RAM (the pagefile on the hard drive).
I’m glad to see the hard drive itself is fine — as an SSD, the read/writes cause only tiny blips of activity. In fact, the whole rest of the system is loafing along with minimal workload.
But the RAM is totally maxed out; and the CPU is breathing hard, not too far behind it. Clearly, my system is underpowered for my current tasks.
If the system were newer, the smart thing would probably be to add more RAM, to bring the system to 16GB, or even 32GB.
But the PC has no open RAM slots, which means I’d have to remove my current RAM and replace it outright with higher-capacity modules. I’d have to either scrap or sell my current RAM; a prospect that’s either wasteful and bad for the environment; or a PITA.
Plus, investing in a major upgrade is iffy on a system that’s already several years old: Something else might well break or need replacing before I’d gotten good use out of the new RAM.
So, it’s time for a new PC.
I’ll look at 16- and probably 32-GB systems; with another large-ish SSD; and the fastest CPU my budget allows. It’ll probably be another laptop because they tend to be more energy efficient; probably with a 17″ screen, as that allows me to place two full-sized documents side-by-side on-screen for easy comparison and copying/pasting. I don’t need a high-end display on a mostly-business laptop (I already have a 4K TV for entertainment); so HD will be fine. I’ll look for something running native Win10, with all current hardware and drivers.
I tend to keep systems a long time, so I’ll probably stick with the major brands, so as to help ensure that warranty coverage and support (e.g. timely software driver updates) will be available.
When the time comes, I’ll find a new home for my current system; it’ll have a lot of life left for someone who won’t beat on it quite as hard as I do.
So: It’s time for some comparison shopping….
Onward!
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running fully-current Win10.
Before you run out and buy a new computer, perhaps you should try something like Process Tamer: http://www.donationcoder.com/software/mouser/popular-apps/process-tamer
And Process Piglet: http://www.donationcoder.com/software/mouser/other-windows-apps/process-piglet
I say this because I have multiple computers in my home, one of the oldest of which is an 11 year old Dell Vostro 410, Q6600 CPU, 4GB RAM, uses SATA drives, (multi-boot with WinXP, Win7, Win10, and Xubuntu) and it’s plenty zippy enough for heavy duty work. In fact, it’s more capable than some of the ones I have with 4X the RAM.
And before you go thinking that I don’t do much with my computers other than e-mail and web surfing, I’d like you to know that I have a reputation for working my computers to death, and getting them to do things they shouldn’t be able to do.
Those 2 applications I mentioned can really help. Another thing that can help is not installing software, if you can help it, to the same drive as your OS, not even on a different partition of the same drive. The OS should have it’s own drive, always.
And don’t defrag an SSD. Defragging is only useful for drives that have moving parts, which an SSD doesn’t have. In fact, defragging an SSD will shorten the life of your drive.