How do I get the most out of this HP TouchSmart Celeron notebook?
June 24, 2015 1:51 AM Subscribe
My old computer is wrecked and for the next two months or so I will be exclusively relying on my HP TouchSmart Notebook with a Celeron Processor. What can I do to make the computer go as far as possible for me in terms of speed and letting me perform all these activities without too much lag or delay as I switch from tasks to tasks, delays which can be very annoying after a while.
The computer has a 500 gigs in storage and comes equipped with Windows 8. Most of what I do on the comp involves watching movies, browsing, writing, with ocassionally more taxing activities like playing games or working with some aspects of photoshop and skyping with friends. I am pretty computer savvy and love installing and upgrading materials, changing hard drives, incorporating more memory etc.
Some ideas on what I thought about doing to minimize the impact of the Celeron processor on speed:
*Upgrading memory from 4 Gigs to 8 Gigs . Unsure if this is possible on this type of computer or not. Previous attempts to answer this question have been pretty vague
*Using Linux or another OS with less bells and whistles than Windows 8, hoping that this will reduce the processing power needed to allow for a smoother experience
Suggestions are welcome on how I can make this computer go as far as possible. As you can see from the above ideas, I am open to hardware enhancements and software changes.
The computer has a 500 gigs in storage and comes equipped with Windows 8. Most of what I do on the comp involves watching movies, browsing, writing, with ocassionally more taxing activities like playing games or working with some aspects of photoshop and skyping with friends. I am pretty computer savvy and love installing and upgrading materials, changing hard drives, incorporating more memory etc.
Some ideas on what I thought about doing to minimize the impact of the Celeron processor on speed:
*Upgrading memory from 4 Gigs to 8 Gigs . Unsure if this is possible on this type of computer or not. Previous attempts to answer this question have been pretty vague
*Using Linux or another OS with less bells and whistles than Windows 8, hoping that this will reduce the processing power needed to allow for a smoother experience
Suggestions are welcome on how I can make this computer go as far as possible. As you can see from the above ideas, I am open to hardware enhancements and software changes.
"Most of what I do on the comp involves watching movies, browsing, writing, with ocassionally more taxing activities like playing games or working with some aspects of photoshop and skyping with friends."
Use the computer in a context-appropriate way. This has been important for me, as I use an old laptop to power the living room "TV". Out of all the things on your list, the things demanding video will be hardest for you.
When you watch movies, bring them over to your computer's HD first and convert them into 480p, when possible. Also, you'll get more performance out of a lighter weight player. For Windows, I would recommend Media Player Classic or SMPlayer. VLC can be greedy, and quality is demonstrably worse on underpowered systems, especially when adding subtitles. If you use MPC like I do, I recommend kawaii codec pack, as it has made a big difference in video performance.
Other things I would do, if using Windows:
- Minimize desktop icons and get rid of your wallpaper. Turn off animated desktop features.
- If you have Windows 8, consider using the Windows 7 theme.
- Reduce the extraneous cruft that auto-starts on your computer.
- Do less multitasking. Close background apps, browser tabs, etc.
- Google on the games you use most, with "improving performance". Obviously, that will mean changing settings to reduce graphics and rendering quality. In some cases, you can do additional system tweaks that will help even more.
Microsoft has a bunch of additional advice on this worth reading, even if they are loath to tell you to not use their latest bells and whistles.
posted by markkraft at 5:05 AM on June 24, 2015
Use the computer in a context-appropriate way. This has been important for me, as I use an old laptop to power the living room "TV". Out of all the things on your list, the things demanding video will be hardest for you.
When you watch movies, bring them over to your computer's HD first and convert them into 480p, when possible. Also, you'll get more performance out of a lighter weight player. For Windows, I would recommend Media Player Classic or SMPlayer. VLC can be greedy, and quality is demonstrably worse on underpowered systems, especially when adding subtitles. If you use MPC like I do, I recommend kawaii codec pack, as it has made a big difference in video performance.
Other things I would do, if using Windows:
- Minimize desktop icons and get rid of your wallpaper. Turn off animated desktop features.
- If you have Windows 8, consider using the Windows 7 theme.
- Reduce the extraneous cruft that auto-starts on your computer.
- Do less multitasking. Close background apps, browser tabs, etc.
- Google on the games you use most, with "improving performance". Obviously, that will mean changing settings to reduce graphics and rendering quality. In some cases, you can do additional system tweaks that will help even more.
Microsoft has a bunch of additional advice on this worth reading, even if they are loath to tell you to not use their latest bells and whistles.
posted by markkraft at 5:05 AM on June 24, 2015
Of course, getting the most out of this computer probably means having access to what you might need from the old.
I don't know how wrecked your old system is, and obviously, you don't have a lot of $$ right now to justify a brand new system... but perhaps you can take your old HD and stick it in an external USB drive enclosure? You can get them from Newegg for under $20, which makes them potentially much cheaper and more useful than buying memory for a system you're probably not going to be using much in the future.
Drive enclosures are very useful things, and will help you deal with having only 500GB, as well as transitioning to a new system in the future.
posted by markkraft at 5:24 AM on June 24, 2015
I don't know how wrecked your old system is, and obviously, you don't have a lot of $$ right now to justify a brand new system... but perhaps you can take your old HD and stick it in an external USB drive enclosure? You can get them from Newegg for under $20, which makes them potentially much cheaper and more useful than buying memory for a system you're probably not going to be using much in the future.
Drive enclosures are very useful things, and will help you deal with having only 500GB, as well as transitioning to a new system in the future.
posted by markkraft at 5:24 AM on June 24, 2015
I'd get a cheap ssd before I got more ram. Don't bother with a Samsung, go on pcpartpicker and buy whatever the cheapest 120/128gb one is. Should be $45-50. Something like a sandisk is totally fine.
I have a terrible computer at work with a celeron and 2gb of ram. It utterly ran like butt... And then I installed a super cheap SSD. It's almost as fast as my fancy desktop with 12gb of ram and a core i5 now for basic use.
The biggest upgrade you can make to a computer nowadays is adding an SSD. And they're all basically as fast and fine unless you're doing super intense stuff and would notice the slight speed boost of the nice ones.
posted by emptythought at 11:35 AM on June 24, 2015
I have a terrible computer at work with a celeron and 2gb of ram. It utterly ran like butt... And then I installed a super cheap SSD. It's almost as fast as my fancy desktop with 12gb of ram and a core i5 now for basic use.
The biggest upgrade you can make to a computer nowadays is adding an SSD. And they're all basically as fast and fine unless you're doing super intense stuff and would notice the slight speed boost of the nice ones.
posted by emptythought at 11:35 AM on June 24, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:03 AM on June 24, 2015