Will upgrading the OS give new life to my computer?

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I've been thinking of buying a new PC or laptop because my current PC has become really slow. It's been slow for some time but now it has gotten to a stage where it's unbearable.

I run applications like Advance SystemCare and CCleaner often but it doesn't make much difference. Tabs or different browsers take long to open. Often there's a delay when I type. I'm typing on the keyboard and it sometimes takes a second or two for the text to show on screen. Videos on websites stutter a lot.

There's plenty of hard drive space. It's got 3GB of RAM. It's a Dimension E521 running Windows Vista. It is over 7 years old. Will upgrading to Windows 7 help or not?

Thanks in advance.
 
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Might be background programs slowing it up, perhaps even your anti virus, in fact I found at one time my McAfee which I was running seemed to be loading twice because of various updates I did a clean install and that helped.

Also lots of maintainace programs run in the background to keep things tidy but do use up memory to do it.

Having said that I just ditched my old XP machine (about 9years old I guess) running a pentium D with 3GB RAM and replaced it with an 8.1 machine running i5 and 8GB wow! What a difference! boots up in under a min and runs like lightning. Well worth the outlay
 
maybe, maybe not.

Have you run the win7 compatibility tools?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware-compatible-windows#1TC=windows-7

You will not get a lot of improvement in speed etc over vista, many other improvements though.

defragging your hdd, removing crap programs running in the background and running regular maintenance tasks might help.

Yes, it's compatible.

I've done the other things you've mentioned. There aren't that many programs on there. I've reinstalled Windows after saving everything as well but it didn't make much difference.

Speed is the main thing I need.

Thanks.
 
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Might be background programs slowing it up, perhaps even your anti virus, in fact I found at one time my McAfee which I was running seemed to be loading twice because of various updates I did a clean install and that helped.

Also lots of maintainace programs run in the background to keep things tidy but do use up memory to do it.

Having said that I just ditched my old XP machine (about 9years old I guess) running a pentium D with 3GB RAM and replaced it with an 8.1 machine running i5 and 8GB wow! What a difference! boots up in under a min and runs like lightning. Well worth the outlay

Yes, I've experienced slowdown with certain security software in the past which I ended up uninstalling.

There's memory cleanup on Advance System Care which I have used.

I've been looking at i5 laptops. Upgrading is probably the best option. Thanks.
 
Changing your OS hard drive to a solid state one will make a massive difference
 
If speed is your bag then install Lubuntu

or

Xubuntu


I tried Lubuntu and then installed it,works well,using windows the fan was doing ten to the dozen but with this its as quiet as the church mouse.

WELL DONE for actually taking that step.

Now with hand on heart you can honestly say you've tried it and in a real world scenario.

Major Kudos
 
If speed is your bag then install Lubuntu

or

Xubuntu

In what way will it improve,I'm in the same boat where this computer is slowing down.

Linux doesn't suffer from disk fragmentation, the way that Windoze does for starters. ;) ;)

To explain the reason for that

NTFS writes each block in consecutive order ie:beginning of the drive 1.2.3.4.5 etc

EXT starts in the middle of the drive and writes each side outwards

This is why EXT is FAR more efficient and suffers MUCH less from "disk thrashing"
 
With all the offers on at the moment, it's hardly worth bothering to spend money on an old PC.

Check out E-buyer, Dabs, Misco and any other favourite box-shifter! I paid under £110 for a Gigabyte Mobo with AMD A4-5300 processor and 4GB RAM. Goes like shh-you-know-what off a shovel!
 
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