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Aug. 10th, 2009
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Here's where I show my computer dunce-ity
Aug. 10th, 2009 04:30 pmI've just about had it with my computer. It's been running painfully slowly pretty much since I got it (which is almost two years ago), and doing all kinds of freezing/crashing things that make me want to just toss it out the window and buy a new one.
What pushed me over the edge was this weekend, when my parents were visiting, and I waited half an hour for the computer to wake up from sleep mode, and finally just manually restarted the damn thing (yay for Word's AutoRecovery). This should not be happening. The entire point of sleep mode is so that you can open the laptop and IT WORKS RIGHT AWAY so you don't have to wait for it to boot up every time. It's always, always slow waking up from sleep mode, but not usually that bad. On a normal day, though, even if the screen comes to life, it'll be a good ten to fifteen minutes before Firefox is usable without freezing, and Trillian always takes at least five minutes to open.
My dad was all, "Well, have you run defrag whatevers lately?" and started fiddling around with it. I don't actually know how I did this, since I barely know what that means, but apparently I have my computer set up to automatically do the defragmentation thing weekly, and it's still running like an eighty-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the leg.
I've decided the problem is Vista and RAM. I've been told that you need at least 2 GB of RAM for Vista to run properly, and my computer only has 1 GB. So... here are my questions for anyone more computer literate than I am. How much RAM should I get? Is the one additional GB going to be enough, or should I go for more? I don't do a whole lot with my computer - generally, Firefox, Trillian, and Word are pretty much it. I do store a lot on there - I have a crapload of music and some videos saved, but that's the hard drive (which is 120 GB) and shouldn't affect RAM, right? Two separate things?
Secondly, where should I get RAM? I can buy it off the Dell website (which is where I got the computer), but maybe it's cheaper to get it somewhere else (I found other websites that sell it, but I don't know if they're reliable). Is this idiot-proof, or am I better off going to a Best Buy or whatever where maybe they could install it for me?
What pushed me over the edge was this weekend, when my parents were visiting, and I waited half an hour for the computer to wake up from sleep mode, and finally just manually restarted the damn thing (yay for Word's AutoRecovery). This should not be happening. The entire point of sleep mode is so that you can open the laptop and IT WORKS RIGHT AWAY so you don't have to wait for it to boot up every time. It's always, always slow waking up from sleep mode, but not usually that bad. On a normal day, though, even if the screen comes to life, it'll be a good ten to fifteen minutes before Firefox is usable without freezing, and Trillian always takes at least five minutes to open.
My dad was all, "Well, have you run defrag whatevers lately?" and started fiddling around with it. I don't actually know how I did this, since I barely know what that means, but apparently I have my computer set up to automatically do the defragmentation thing weekly, and it's still running like an eighty-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the leg.
I've decided the problem is Vista and RAM. I've been told that you need at least 2 GB of RAM for Vista to run properly, and my computer only has 1 GB. So... here are my questions for anyone more computer literate than I am. How much RAM should I get? Is the one additional GB going to be enough, or should I go for more? I don't do a whole lot with my computer - generally, Firefox, Trillian, and Word are pretty much it. I do store a lot on there - I have a crapload of music and some videos saved, but that's the hard drive (which is 120 GB) and shouldn't affect RAM, right? Two separate things?
Secondly, where should I get RAM? I can buy it off the Dell website (which is where I got the computer), but maybe it's cheaper to get it somewhere else (I found other websites that sell it, but I don't know if they're reliable). Is this idiot-proof, or am I better off going to a Best Buy or whatever where maybe they could install it for me?