My wife recently had a laptop die on her (after 8 years of service), so I’m having to a appropriate my old Linux laptop and load Windows 2000 on it (thanks to some advice on the PC Mech forums). I was able to cannibalize an extra 64 MB of memory and a 20 GB hard drive from the old machine, but I knew it was going to be slower than her 500 Mhz machine. So when loading the OS, I took extra time to try to squeeze the best performance out of it:
- Loaded the OS fresh.
- Installed the latest service pack and then ran Windows updates.
- Disabled all the animated menus options and deleted all temporary files.
- Went through all the services and disabled anything which wasn’t absolutely necessary for operation.
- Defragged the hard drive. The idea here is the OS is fully patched with all the temporary files removed and (since this is Windows 2000) really isn’t going to change the amount of hard drive space the OS needs.
Since the machine is mostly going to be used only for Internet browsing and very basic office document editing, I did the following:
- Loaded Firefox (custom install with none of the plugins loaded).
- Installed the basic “requirements”, a PDF reader, flash plugin, etc.
- Installed OpenOffice.
- Again, cleared all temporary files.
- Defrag again. Since all the core programs are loaded this “optimizes” them as much as possible.
Of course the machine is still limited by its resources (266 Mhz, 144 MB RAM), it responds reasonably well. So if you loading a newer OS on relatively dated hardware, take the extra time to try to do things as carefully as possible. Any speed performance you can get will be much more noticeable.
Jason Faulkner is the man who brings you our daily tips. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Quote:”Since the machine is mostly going to be used only for Internet browsing and very basic office document editing, I did the following:”
Why not just use Linux?
Just wondering why you loaded windows 2000. It sounds like you could have left it as linux as she will be using firefox and open office ?
The machine wasn’t for my use.
The person using it is most comfortable with Windows, so that is why I loaded it over Linux.
On a side note, Windows 2000 seems to perform better on this machine than Puppy Linux did. Don’t get me wrong, I really really liked Puppy Linux, but after using the two, Windows 2000 (once I disabled all the unneeded services and effects) is slightly faster.
I’ve loaded Windows 2000 in a few older machines and they do quite fine by me. Plus it’s compatible with most anything made for XP. I think of it as XP without all the bells and whistles (or you might say stripped down version of XP). I’ve got two similar PC’s(hardware wise) one running 2000 Pro and the other XP Pro and the 2000 Pro is my speedier machine and just as dependable(if not more) than the XP one. Like Jason did you have to think of who is using the machine. If someone is an advanced user(geek) then perhaps Linux would be great, but for the average or casual PC user Windows is the way to go.