"Terry Coombs" wrote

| a 1.8 Ghz quad has got to be faster than my current 2.3Ghz dual core.
|
| Only if your software can take advantage of the extra cores. This is
| usually limited to processor intensive work like photo and video
| editing.
|

| I'm leaving the task manager open (minimized) and watching the cpu usage
,
| I frequently see it running over 70% , and maxed out pretty often .
| Especially when opening a web browser or loading a newsgroup . I'm just
| tired of sitting here waiting for the comp to catch up with a new task and
| figgered for under 20 bucks it's worth a try . The wife's "new" Lenovo
quad
| core I5 machine can dance circles around this thing ....

He's right. Dual 2.3 should be faster than
quad 1.8 for most things. And it's XP? That
should be faster than Win7. At any rate, it
needs less resources. XP can be very zippy.
If a dual 2.3 is dragging then you probably
have issues that have nothing to do with
the CPU.

Temp files that need to be deleted?
Insufficient RAM?
IE cache too big? (Even if you don't use IE
if affects Explorer.)
Services? If you haven't inspected and trimmed
running services you definitely have bloat there.
Unnecessary programs running? Use Autoruns
to trim startup programs.
Bloated anti-virus and anti-malware software?

You might also look at Procmon (sysinternals.com)
to see what's going on in general, to make sure
there isn't pointless bloat running.

Also, speed and core count are not the only factors.
I had a quad-core Phenom Black or some such awhile
back. I built the box with an Asus board. It was fine,
but just never really zippy. I don't know why. Maybe that
CPU was never a great model? Maybe it didn't like the
board so much? I don't know. I currently have an Asus
M5A78L-M with an AMD FX-8300 8 core 3.3. It's *very*
zippy and I'm happy. I'm tempted to buy another set
as a spare. (Though I don't attribute that to 8 cores.
I had zippy XP when it was one core.) When I bought
the 8-core, late last year, it was about $150 for the two
items. The whole box cost me about $300 to build. Not
top-of-the-line by any means. That, to my mind, would
be a waste of money. Like buying a $4000 TV that will
be $600 next year. But what's the point of spending the
time if you're only going to use bargain basement leftovers?
Last year's best can be had fairly cheap. Isn't your time
worth more than a $13 CPU?

It sounds to me like you're enjoying the project as a
hobby and it really won't make much difference whether
the computer works well when you're done. Especially
if you're thinking of a switch to Ubuntu. There's nothing
wrong with Linux, but that implies that you're not using
any critical software that's tied to Windows, so you're
probably not putting a load on the computer in the
first place.

One other note: Slow browsers have become a common
curse. Firefox and friends are so ridiculously bloated that
they can take several seconds to load. There's no excuse
for that. It's just sloppy programming. We're going back to
the days when software needed splash screens to hide the
load time. The difference is that now it's on a 2.3 dual core
and back then it was on a 350 mHz single core. But there's
not much you can do about that other than stick with older
versions of Firefox.

Also, if it's slow online
then think about disabling script or using NoScript, and using
a HOSTS file. Spyware/adware webpages that are essentially
javascript software have become very common. A few years ago,
100 KB was too big for a webpage. Today, 1-3 MB is not unusual.
And most of that is javascript that's being stretched way beyond
what it was ever meant to do. I hear a lot of complaints from
friends about slow pages. Personally I don't see it because 1) I
almost never enable script. It's not safe and I don't like webpages
that jump around or limit functionality against my wishes. And
2) I use a HOSTS file that eliminates most spying and ads. Ads
themselves are becoming a new, serious security risk (malware
authors buy ads at sites like NYT anonymously and then link
script to them in order to perform "driveby dowloads") but they
also cause a lot of drag, causing the browser to load files from
numerous 3rd-party locations.
I find that FF takes too long to load (about 5 seconds on 1st
run) but most webpages load almost instantly without script.
Also, Pale Moon is not quite so much a hog as FF. It's virtually
the same thing, but with some extras removed.

One last note: housekeeping. I find a lot of people complain
about slow speed but then happen to mention that there are
"only" 50 tabs open in Firefox. Often each tab will be periodically
reloading crap like videos. I have no sympathy for people who
can't be bothered to clean up after themselves. What amazes
me is that those same people, when told they have too many
tabs open, complain that the browser "should be able to
handle it". I suspect those are people whose mothers always
picked up their clothes from their bedroom floor. (I'm not saying
this about you, just noting that if you leave too much running
that can be a cause of slow speed.)