Well, it’s a Lenovo Ideapad S145 with an Intel Celeron and 4GB of RAM. I’m writing this on it. I want it to be slightly faster at browsing the internet. I use Chrome, I know that’s awful xD
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Locking for rule 5.
I just want to throw in that if you do want to give Linux a shot, you can do so without installing it.
You can prepare a USB stick from which you could later install Linux, but before you’ll actually install it, you will boot from this USB stick and then you’re able to click around, browse the web etc…
It won’t be entirely representative of the actual performance in the end, because it will run off of the USB stick rather than the hard drive, but yeah, you can at least get an impression whether it might work for your usage.
This kind of bootable USB stick is also called a “Live-USB”, just to give you another term to search for. And well, you will need to enter your BIOS (or at least the boot order menu) of your laptop to tell it to actually boot off of the USB stick.
It isn’t trivial, particularly since I don’t know how techy you are, but yeah, before you go through with the installation, it is rather unlikely that you break things by doing this.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt to create a backup beforehand anyways. 🙂
And yes, I do also think that Linux really deserves consideration here, unless you know upfront that you strictly need applications that do not support Linux. Linux has been known to give old hardware a second life, and your hardware sounds old enough for that to apply here.
Oh, and perhaps also worth throwing in that browsers do work the same on Linux. I moved both of my parents from Windows 7 to Linux and since they practically only use the browser, it took just a few minutes for them to adapt…
Upgrade the RAM, SSD and install Linux.
MXLinux will fit just fine on what OP has now. It’ll even game better.
There’s some super lightweight distros that will run a peach on that hardware.
Source: I had a Toshiba Celeron 300, 2GB RAM, and it was serviceable.
Yep, so all is not lost.
Download more RAM. A 4GB DDR4 SODIMM, which would double it, is $15 on US Ebay. Check what that costs where you live.
Faster than what? Assuming you’re currently on a version of Windows, then moving to a lightweight Linux distro running a low footprint desktop environment would likely free up system resources for your web browsing. Windows is bloated and not maintained for older or lower powered hardware. The S145 seems to be a dual core Celeron based system so you’ll get reasonable performance benefits switching to a less resource hungry and less bloated OS.
I’d try something like MX Linux XFCE for a familiar windows like interface but with a smaller footprint freeing up resources for web browsing. You could also try MX Linux Fluxbox for an even lighter-weight desktop environment.
In terms of browser, I’d recommend sticking with Firefox (or derivatives like Libre Wolf) or Chromium if you want to stay closer to Chrome. I’d ditch chrome for privacy reasons rather than speed; most browsers are bloated these days and changing the OS will probably make the bigger impact when running lower powered hardware.
Thanksヾ(•ω•`)o
Three steps:
- If you can afford it, upgrade to a SSD.
- Install Linux Mint XFCE or Fedora XFCE.
- Use Min Browser. In my tests, with a netbook with an Atom processor and 2GB RAM, it’s infinitely faster than Firefox or any other Chromium.
Profit.
Second Linux Mint. I have a Surface that absolutely slogged under Windows 10 with 4gb ram. Mint gave me a ton of headroom to work with.
As much as people would like to give advice…
- Rule 5 - This is not a support community
With that said, it would help to know what OS you’re running or planning to run, and post your question under a relevant operating system community.
Eh… I think this can stay… its more like a “How does someone make their laptop faster?” type of question… and the details are just one example… I think the ban on “How do I” questions is primarily to make threads more relevent to everyone… and I think advice here can be useful to everyone.
You can’t make a thread like this relevant to everyone, each operating system works differently.
Windows 10, you gotta cut out the bloatware and telemetry, and still probably install more RAM anyways.
Linux, you take advantage of fstab to arrange a tmpfs or ramfs filesystem for temporary files, internet cache, and even system log files if you really wanna cut down on unnecessary storage write cycles.
There’s no universal one size fits all answer here, it all depends on the operating system, especially these days…
I know it’s not for support but I just wanted to post quickly here. Well, I use Windows 10
“I know I shouldn’t but I want to.”
Um…?
Initial thoughts, which shouldn’t cost much if any money:
Check your hard drive: how full is it? Clear out caches and programs you never use. Maybe run a check for bad sectors. Way back in the day, I’d suggest defragging the drive, lol.
Update your definitions and run a virus check on your laptop: you may have picked up a virus or PUP that’s slowing you down.
Take a look at Task Manager at various times: are you close to maxing out RAM, processor, or disk cache? Figure out if there are processes running that you can kill.
Go through everything that’s set up for Quick Start and set it to non-Quick Start if you’re not using it regularly. [I just set everything to non-Quick Start.]
If your browser supports it, install Ublock Origin. If you can do it, install a pi-hole.
While you’re at it, check your router. This is a laptop, so I’m assuming it’s not wired to the internet, but if it is, try switching out the wire in case it’s worn. Check the cables between the router and the wall while you’re at it.
Unplug your router for at least a minute, then start it up again.
Are you running a lot of different devices that may be interfering with your connection, or running against potential high-bandwidth applications (streaming, livestreaming, torrenting)?
Is this problem specific to one or more areas? It’s possible that you’re too far from the router or there are things obstructing the signal.
Are there times that you get better speed (either times of day or times of the month)? Your ISP may be congested or they may be throttling your connection.
Did you leave your wifi open and other people are piggybacking off it? Is it running recent firmware?
Consider contacting your ISP and asking them to run a line test to see if there are issues external to your home. (Be prepared for them to try to upsell you.)
Switch to a lightweight browser like Firefox, Vivaldi, or Cromite.
Things that you can do that will cost money: increase the memory in your laptop (you have 4gb, it can take up to 12gb). If it’s not already on an SSD, switch to an SSD.
The answer to this question depends on a lot of factors. For instance, if the internet service you’re using is slow, nothing you do to your laptop will make any difference.
Before you put time, effort or money into anything else, run a speed test: https://openspeedtest.com/
Like others have said, more RAM would help. 4GB is the absolute bare minimum for a usable desktop.
A scan for any malware might not be a bad idea, especially if you’re running Windows. I would also examine whether you actually need any browser extensions you have installed. I’d also check and disable anything running in the background that you don’t actually need.
Wiping the drive and reinstalling Windows may also help, so would dumping Windows for a lighter weight Linux distro. Linux tends to be more RAM friendly.
You might also want to check how much free space you have on your drive. SSDs tend to get slower the more full they get. Ideally you want to keep under 70% full.
If your laptop has a HDD, replace it with an SSD. That upgrade would give you the single greatest performance increase, however SSDs have been standard for some time.
If adding ram or moving to Linux isn’t an option, you really need a more stripped down browser. I’m going to use 2 very dirty words to Lemmy users, Edge and Brave. Out of the “big” browsers they will use the least amount of ram. Opera I’ve heard isnt that bad either but I’ve never used it. Feel free to try some forks of Firefox (base FF uses more than the 3 I mentioned) as well but I don’t have experience in their RAM usage.
4GB for Windows is a bare minimum for it to run. 8GB is minimum for a usable system, 16 if you need to actually work.
Turn off all the animation (start, run, sysdm.cpl - under the Performance tab click the radio button for performance).
Not really much else you can do short of increasing the ram.
I looked up OP’s system, it supports 8GB RAM max.
Adding my comment to yours since it is in the same menu on windows. Barring all other suggestions op, which you should probably do instead, there’s also increasing the page file.
Won’t always yield results depending on how well windows is managing it by itself, but it can help if you still want teensy bit more after buying better RAM sticks.
You can also be a goober about it and buy a program called Primocache. It takes that same setting and let’s you reserve even more of your hard drive just for a page file. But like I said, very very silly.
Yea, I thought about the page file adjustments, but didn’t feel like getting up and looking at a machine because I couldn’t remember exactly what the screens were, haha.
Plus Windows has gotten so much better. With 95, Win2k, etc, manually setting it really made a difference - seemsnto make much less difference today. Though it could help OP - worth trying anyway.
Don’t feel bad, they’ve moved the setting menu to a different more hidden place on every release of windows. 👈😎👈
