Craptop needs a new OS

[BORTZ]

A friend of mine has an ancient ass laptop. Its a Dell from about 2005 I think, and the most important thing here is that it has 1 GB of RAM. He took it to a computer buddy and they put, of all things, Vista 64x as the primary OS. Now the poor lappy takes ages to boot and is almost impossible to use. And im not just saying that because it wasnt responding "instantly". I toyed with it for a couple of hours just waiting for Media player and the sound bar to appear.

Whats the best solution to fix this bad boy? I assume a fresh install of Linux, like Ubuntu or something. But I have little and no experience with using and installing that, respectively. Halp?

I would suggest saving the time and effort and just buy another computer, but hes kinda hard up for cash, especially seeing as he got evicted from his apartment a few weeks ago.

 

[Danny600kill]

I've never been a huge Linux fan and if you've never used it before I'd stick with Windows.

Maybe stick XP on it and upgrade the Ram, depending on what Ram it is you could get some cheap sticks on ebay and that will instantly make it quicker.

If you do choose to go with more Ram depending on all the specs ( Be a lot of help if you posted full specs ) you could just stick W7 on it

 

[BORTZ]

I've never been a huge Linux fan and if you've never used it before I'd stick with Windows.

Maybe stick XP on it and upgrade the Ram, depending on what Ram it is you could get some cheap sticks on ebay and that will instantly make it quicker.

If you do choose to go with more Ram depending on all the specs ( Be a lot of help if you posted full specs ) you could just stick W7 on it

...I know... but its with him and I didnt think to really check what all it has. nuts.

But hmmm. All he does is do some light internet browsing and music downloading/listening.

 

[dragonblood9999]

it is very easy to install Ubuntu. download the live cd version and you can ether burn it to a cd/dvd(not sure what the size of the iso is now) or use it on a bootable usb drive or dual boot it in windows and it's very easy to do, you can install Ubuntu like a program on windows

 

[Snailface]

...I know... but its with him and I didnt think to really check what all it has. nuts.

But hmmm. All he does is do some light internet browsing and music downloading/listening.

Linux is perfect for that. He'll hardly even notice the difference.

Not a linux fanboy, but just for casual stuff like you mentioned, Linux is no obstacle.

 

[Danny600kill]

Linux is perfect for that. He'll hardly even notice the difference.

Not a linux fanboy, but just for casual stuff like you mentioned, Linux is no obstacle.

I'm sure he's going to notice the difference, and when it comes to installing his favourite programs ( He may not use it much other than music/internet but I'll bet money that he still has some programs on it )he's going to experience issues. For example you say he uses it for music, so I'm assuming he has iTunes, which doesn't natively work with Linux

In my honest opinion if your friend is asking others to help speed up / install an OS on his laptop he isn't going to be able to use Linux without it causing him issues

 

[DinohScene]

Can you upgrade the RAM?
If so, do it.
Then install either Linux or Win 7 (it's possible if you tweak it to take up less resources)

 

[RodrigoDavy]

It really depends. The recent versions of ubuntu consume a lot of RAM and require 3D acceleration. My Ubuntu PC is consuming 1.3 GB of RAM and I only have firefox with 3 tabs open.

If you really want to use linux I would advise Linux Mint which is a very popular distro based on Ubuntu or Lubuntu which is basically a lightweight Ubuntu.

Just make sure your crapbook doesn't use some generic chinese video card they might not work properly with Linux. Intel graphics cards works great out of the box, Nvidia and Amd might cause you some trouble but also work once properly installed.

 

[tbgtbg]

XP XP XP XP XP

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

If you don't want to bother with any Linux distros, Windows XP would work well enough on it. You could even try putting Tiny XP on it, which works quite well for craptops.

 

[Originality]

I'm in the XP or Linux camp. Probably Ubuntu, since I've seen how easy it is to use.

 

[Arras]

Yeah, recent versions of Ubuntu are kind of resource heavy. I'd say TinyXP (I've used it myself on an ancient machine and it works pretty well) or Linux Mint. If you really want Ubuntu, try installing XFCE4 (I haven't tried Lubuntu myself so I don't know about that, but XFCE should make it a lot faster at least).

 

[BORTZ]

Wow I really appreciate all the help guys.

 

[FAST6191]

For the record windows XP runs out of support in 8 months or so (April 2014 -- http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/products/lifecycle ). Granted that still gives you 8 months to sort something else out but I have to note it.

I would be nice if we could get a specs list though -- quite a few laptops sold with a half nice processor but basically no ram at all (also bad graphics but that is not such a problem as long as you do not want to do games or CAD).

On the linux thing well it has firefox, chrome/chromium, libreoffice and most of the stuff from https://ninite.com/ bar the obvious. GTKpod and friends also vastly simplifies the stupidity that is putting songs on an idevice if you have that to worry about. We can talk distros if you want but for the most part I say anything on http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major save arch linux (it is good but not what you want here). Change the window manager to something like LXDE or Xfce if you are stuck with the less than stellar machine.

Also for the record windows 7 is quite lightweight and if you have a processor capable of 64 bit windows then it should be more than enough.

 

[Flame]

as FAST said xp support runs out in months, so a no no for XP.

install Lubuntu light and does the job.

 

[tbgtbg]

OH NOES SUPPORT IS RUNNING OUT, who cares, not like MS support is worth a damn anyway.

 

[FAST6191]

OH NOES SUPPORT IS RUNNING OUT, who cares, not like MS support is worth a damn anyway.

Non paid MS support is somewhat questionable in quality (hence the many, many sites dealing with support for it vs linux distros that tend to be self contained) but this means no more updates, no more security fixes and when a new security hole gets found then MS get to say "not our problem".

I am curious to see what will go on that day and what third party stuff will arise (some people even managed to punch windows 98 into something interesting and the legacy of 98 is not half so big as the legacy of XP) but that is a different discussion.

 

[Flame]

OH NOES SUPPORT IS RUNNING OUT, who cares, not like MS support is worth a damn anyway.

yeah you know nothing about computers and OSes.

no more support mean no more fixes, no more fixes mean big hole for Nigerian princes to become richer. the wrong ad or website can fuck your computer. forgot software.

 

[YayMii]

If you don't mind the interface, I'd suggest to give Windows 8 a try. It runs just as light as XP (if not lighter), is just as secure as Windows 7, and it's still going to have support for a while. I've installed it on my mom's Pentium T4200 laptop and it runs great.

 

[RodrigoDavy]

If you don't mind the interface, I'd suggest to give Windows 8 a try. It runs just as light as XP (if not lighter), is just as secure as Windows 7, and it's still going to have support for a while. I've installed it on my mom's Pentium T4200 laptop and it runs great.

I'm really sorry but Windows 8 is not as light as Windows XP.

Windows XP recommended requirements are a 300MHz Pentium processor and 128MB of RAM
Windows 8 minimum requirements are 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM for 32-bit and 2GB of RAM for 64-bit