Speeding up Samsung NC10 Netbook

[Inferno.]

Hello folks.

Just acquired a Samsung NC10 Netbook on the cheap, £50, bargain!

Anyway, it came with XP installed and was clogged with crap. I was in the process of reinstalling Windows XP when I realised I absolutely despise the outdated POS. I then ejected the CD and put a Windows 7 disc in and installed Windows 7 x86 Starter. Obviously the system is rather limited since it's a netbook (1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 160GB SATA HDD.) I have already toned down all of the visual styles stuff, put it into high performance mode for when it's plugged into the mains etc.

I am planning on buying a stick of 2GB DDR2 RAM to put into it, I imagine that would help. Is there anything else I could do to make it a bit snappier? Obviously installing an SSD would increase it dramatically, but that's out of the question as I don't want to spend a lot on this machine. It's mainly for YouTube/BBC iPlayer and general internet browsing when I'm in bed and can't use my desktop.

I was thinking along the lines of getting a fast SD card and using it for a cache device? Would that have any effect on performance?

Any tips/suggestions/pointers would be appreciated.

[Alakazander]

Overclock it .

It's mainly for YouTube/BBC iPlayer and general internet browsing when I'm in bed and can't use my desktop

If it's mostly a media player, then I would recommend installing Puppy Linux over Windows 7.

I've used it on 2 ye olde laptops so far (1.6 and 1.8 GHz respectively, 2GB RAM on both) and the performance boost is definitely noticeable.

EDIT:
You're talking about ReadyBoost, right? Never used it personally, but flash drives cost money, and Puppy Linux is free.

[Inferno.]

Overclock it .


If it's mostly a media player, then I would recommend installing Puppy Linux over Windows 7.

I've used it on 2 ye olde laptops so far (1.6 and 1.8 GHz respectively, 2GB RAM on both) and the performance boost is definitely noticeable.

EDIT:
You're talking about ReadyBoost, right? Never used it personally, but a flash drive costs money, and Puppy Linux is free.

The trouble with Linux is I'm willing to try it, but I can never stick with it as I'm not a fan of change. Every time I've tried it, it's lasted a couple of hours then bang, back to Windows.

I don't know, ReadyBoost or having the pagefile on a fast SD card (class 10 or something), since it has an SD card slot I'll never use. I thought I might as well try and get some use from it? And no, not a USB drive. I don't want a USB drive sticking out of the side of it permanently.

[Mohit]

Download avg system tune up and do some tweaks with it. Like disabling search, thumbnails etc. Etc.

[Inferno.]

Download avg system tune up and do some tweaks with it. Like disabling search, thumbnails etc. Etc.

No.

[Mohit]

Opensuse is another Linux that looks and feels windows and is not bad looking like xp. You can also try that (see images on Google)

[Alakazander]

The trouble with Linux is I'm willing to try it, but I can never stick with it as I'm not a fan of change. Every time I've tried it, it's lasted a couple of hours then bang, back to Windows.

I don't know, ReadyBoost or having the pagefile on a fast SD card (class 10 or something), since it has an SD card slot I'll never use. I thought I might as well try and get some use from it? And no, not a USB drive. I don't want a USB drive sticking out of the side of it permanently.

Do you use Firefox, SeaMonkey, or Opera on Windows? If you do then there won't be a difference browsing-wise, assuming you install Adobe Flash instead of finagling with Gnash.
And if you use it for standalone media as well as streamed media, then I don't think there should be a fundamental difference, other than asking you if you're sure you want to install a proprietary codec.

Sorry, I assumed you'd have to get an adapter. Forgot that many netbooks have those ports built-in (which is especially silly because my MSi U100 has one, which is I why I use it for modding my consoles).
I honestly don't know enough about it to tell you which one will give the better performance boost, especially since I've read inconsistent results about ReadyBoost, and very little about using it with an SD card.

[Peter P]

Hey there!
I've acquired a netbook acer aspire one with the same specifications as yours about a year an a half ago.
When I changed ram to 2 GB (it's the max in my netbook, doesn't mean it's the same for you) the response increased to a nice performance.
A few weeks I've changed the OS from W7Starter to W7HP it helped to increase performance too. This happened, I think, because The preinstalled windows has a lot of trash that slows down a lot the response of the machine. So, after I used the w7hp usb, it only installed the windows itself.
If you choose to change your OS, just be aware that your drivers (graphics, wireless, and others) may be removed, which can be solved by getting them through windows update or in the respective websites (samsung, intel, atheros,etc).

[Jazzmarazz]

If it is just for youtube, EP, etc. browsing, then you aren't going to need loads of music, videos and pictures stored on it, correct?

Starter should be pretty small, so why not just buy a 16GB SSD, like this one?

[Inferno.]

If it is just for youtube, EP, etc. browsing, then you aren't going to need loads of music, videos and pictures stored on it, correct?

Starter should be pretty small, so why not just buy a 16GB SSD, like this one?

Decent suggestion, that.
I think I'll have to look into tiny SSD drives later on after work.

Just checked, cheapest SSD from eBuyer is £32 as it's 32GB. There aren't really any smaller drives on eBay that are cheaper. The cheapest seems to hover around the £25 mark. That's a bit much imo.

Although if I were to fork out £30+ for one, I'd not look to save a few quid and get this
http://www.ebuyer.com/279401-verbati...sd-black-47477

[MaslowK]

I am planning on buying a stick of 2GB DDR2 RAM to put into it, I imagine that would help. Is there anything else I could do to make it a bit snappier? Obviously installing an SSD would increase it dramatically, but that's out of the question as I don't want to spend a lot on this machine.

Adding ram is about the only thing you could do to significantly increase the performance of a netbook. Running "performance tweaks" and even installing an SSD wouldn't cause a significant increase in performance considering your CPU is more than powerful enough to handle web browsing etc on its own. Unless you plan on playing reasonably taxing PC games (har) it'd be a waste of cash to get an SSD.

Another thing to check would be if your CPU is being throttled by Windows 7, which they tend to be by default. Here's a guide on checking and adjusting/disabling the throttling; http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/...cpu-throttling

Other than this, you should check how much disk space you have allocated to your page file; it should generally be set to twice as much ram you have installed (in your case, 2gb).

Of course, as others have said, as far as having a modern OS that isn't such a resource hog, ultimately your best bet would be to pick some flavor of linux (not Ubuntu), especially if this isn't your only computer. The popular distros have actually come a very long way as far as usability goes in the last five or so years, though how fast a windows user would adapt depends heavily on what window manager (interface) they choose. Of course it's entirely up to you, just thought I'd throw that out there (again :p).

[Inferno.]

Well thanks for all the suggestions people.

I know for a fact I'm definitely upgrading the RAM this weekend. Hopefully have the stick on Saturday if I pick the right eBay seller.

I've got spare HDDs and nothing to lose really, as far as at least trying Linux goes. I could even try it from USB/CD rather than installing it to a HDD.

Basically this netbook is for YouTube, internet browsing and BBC iPlayer/4oD and a tiny bit of playing AVI/MP4 files and whatnot through VLC.

I know there are absolutely tons of versions of Linux and I'm too lazy to look into it myself. So somebody just link me to what they want me to try?

[Mohit]

www.opensuse.org

[Inferno.]

Puppy Linux is incredibly snappy isn't it? I mean damn, the UI of the older version that I tried was hideous. But it ran so quickly! Gonna put my 60GB SATA HDD into my netbook and install the newest version on there.

Hopefully it's not as ugly as the outdated version I tried.

[Mohit]

Puppy Linux is incredibly snappy isn't it? I mean damn, the UI of the older version that I tried was hideous. But it ran so quickly! Gonna put my 60GB SATA HDD into my netbook and install the newest version on there.

Hopefully it's not as ugly as the outdated version I tried.

I tried it.
It's as fast as anything can be.