Laptop Question

[Liquid Ice]

I am normally a very knowledgable person about pcs but i don't know much about laptops so i thought i'd try here. I helped my brother pick out a toshiba satellite a25-s207 laptop and he says to me that it has been running a little sluggish. The touchpad seems to pause at times.

Specs of Laptop

I was wondering if doing a format on this laptop and installing the OS fresh is a good idea. I've heard of laptops where if you format it you can only reinstall using the cd that they gave you to "restore" the system.

I also wanted to ask about the speedstep technology that is out. Is there any way to find out if tihs laptop has it and also to find out when and how much the system is slowing? I want to know this to make sure that the system is running at full speed when it is on AC power.

Thanks for any suggestions

[bailey]

if that is the p4 one it will slow down a bit if it is running on battery power to help conservr battery life, if it is running on ac power, and it gets too warm, it will also throttel down to help keep it cooler, you can tell this by hearing the fan running at longer periods of time, but it should run at full speed when it is cool and on ac power, the tuch pad can be tuchy too, you could plug a regular mouse in and use it that way to test it,

[Mac Medic]

The speedstep tech is controlled in the BIOS. Boot into the bios and see if it has been turned off, if it has the processor will automatically run at it's slowest speed.