John Rumm used his keyboard to write :
On 04/03/2020 11:51, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
John Rumm wrote :
unless its got a disc full of crap.

At that age the drive may well be ailing. It will have been slow even when
new.

I am told it hasn't had much use since new. It was crawling to the point of
logging in, but I have managed to sort that out using a rebuild from the
hidden partition. Unfortunately it didn't do a restore to factory and left
the following rubbish in place and loading.

It loads various things when booting, including Premier Systems, Winzip
Driver and Webdiscover - grinding to almost an halt in the process. It
becomes so slow, it is impossible to use control panel to be able remove
them.

I seem unable to do a safe boot, or maybe I don't know how...

Which OS did it restore to? If 10, then there are number of ways going to
safe mode:

https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/h...s-in-safe-mode

It was Win10, but as described below - I have resolved it now, via
accessing safe mode. I'm not sure its a legitimate copy of Win10
though, because it says 'activation required' in the bottom right hand
corner.

Not all that bothered, but it still has a peculiar issue..

If set to hibernate, instead of sleep - it seems to go through the
hibernation process when the power button is pressed, but when coming
out of hibernation the screen remains black. It flashes up a photo,
then black again. It never gets to the login screen. Sleep, shut down
and reboot all work fine.

On 05/03/2020 11:53, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
John Rumm used his keyboard to write :
On 04/03/2020 11:51, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
John Rumm wrote :
unless its got a disc full of crap.

At that age the drive may well be ailing. It will have been slow
even when new.

I am told it hasn't had much use since new. It was crawling to the
point of logging in, but I have managed to sort that out using a
rebuild from the hidden partition. Unfortunately it didn't do a
restore to factory and left the following rubbish in place and loading.

It loads various things when booting, including Premier Systems,
Winzip Driver and Webdiscover - grinding to almost an halt in the
process. It becomes so slow, it is impossible to use control panel to
be able remove them.

I seem unable to do a safe boot, or maybe I don't know how...

Which OS did it restore to? If 10, then there are number of ways going
to safe mode:

https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/h...s-in-safe-mode

It was Win10, but as described below - I have resolved it now, via

Yup, sorry read that after posting...

accessing safe mode. I'm not sure its a legitimate copy of Win10 though,
because it says 'activation required' in the bottom right hand corner.

Does the laptop have a windows serial sticker anywhere on it? (typically
only found on Win 7 or earlier). If it does, then you may find you can
go into the ten activation wizard, and elect to enter a new key. Use the
one on the sticker and it will likely activate.

However not being activated is less of an issue on Win10 - it will still
get updates, and continue to work without ever locking you out or
insisting on activation. However you won't be able to use some of the
aesthetic customisation options.

Not all that bothered, but it still has a peculiar issue..

If set to hibernate, instead of sleep - it seems to go through the
hibernation process when the power button is pressed, but when coming
out of hibernation the screen remains black. It flashes up a photo, then
black again. It never gets to the login screen. Sleep, shut down and
reboot all work fine.

Might be worth checking if there is a BIOS update for it - some older
machines can have odd screen related issues like this with Win 10. I had
similar on an old (but high end when new) Dell Inspiron recently.
Converted it to 10 from 7, and it worked fine up until it found a new
display driver to match the hardware. After that, it just gave a blank
screen on the internal LCD after booting (but was still fully functional
on an external monitor or via remote control). A BIOS update sorted that.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm explained :
Might be worth checking if there is a BIOS update for it - some older
machines can have odd screen related issues like this with Win 10. I had
similar on an old (but high end when new) Dell Inspiron recently. Converted
it to 10 from 7, and it worked fine up until it found a new display driver to
match the hardware. After that, it just gave a blank screen on the internal
LCD after booting (but was still fully functional on an external monitor or
via remote control). A BIOS update sorted that.

Thanks, I will take a look at that..

John Rumm wrote :
If yo do the SSD upgrade now, she they may be pleasently surprised just how
much better it could be.

She only uses it for occasional browsing, Word and email. She suggested
to bin it, if it wasn't easy fix.

On 05/03/2020 12:30, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
John Rumm wrote :
If yo do the SSD upgrade now, she they may be pleasently surprised
just how much better it could be.

She only uses it for occasional browsing, Word and email. She suggested
to bin it, if it wasn't easy fix.
I have found that mechanically sound lappies with 2GB of ram and a
decent 64 bit processors become far too useful to bin once SSDed (and in
my case [linux] Minted.


--
€œIt is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.€�

Thomas Sowell

On 04/03/2020 11:45, John Rumm wrote:

Now swap out the HDD and replace with the SSD. That should get you a
system that will now likely be fast enough to use well enough to
optimise it a bit further.

In my experience a ssd makes very little difference to the speed of
windows, however in the past I've probably already optismed Windows for
performance rather than looks.

Some real time activities of virus checkers can really slow down a
machine especially those for the Norton/Mcafee stables which i now
regard as just as bad as a virus itself.




--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On Thursday, 5 March 2020 13:17:02 UTC, alan_m wrote:
On 04/03/2020 11:45, John Rumm wrote:

Now swap out the HDD and replace with the SSD. That should get you a
system that will now likely be fast enough to use well enough to
optimise it a bit further.

In my experience a ssd makes very little difference to the speed of
windows, however in the past I've probably already optismed Windows for
performance rather than looks.

it depends on other factors. An old machine with 2G ram will do a good bit of swapfiling, and an ssd then makes a huge improvement.


NT

On 05/03/2020 13:16, alan_m wrote:
On 04/03/2020 11:45, John Rumm wrote:

Now swap out the HDD and replace with the SSD. That should get you a
system that will now likely be fast enough to use well enough to
optimise it a bit further.

In my experience a ssd makes very little difference to the speed of
windows, however in the past I've probably already optismed Windows for
performance rather than looks.


what on earth is the 'speed of windows'?

The perceived speed of a computer is a function of many things and disk
access is one of the slowest bottlenecks there is.
SSD wont make CPU any faster, but it sure speeds up loading code and
virtual memory from disk.


Some real time activities of virus checkers can really slow down a
machine especially those for the Norton/Mcafee stables which i now
regard as just as bad as a virus itself.


The Only Way Is Linux.





--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone

"Harry Bloomfield"; "Esq." wrote in
message ...
John Rumm used his keyboard to write :
On 04/03/2020 11:51, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
John Rumm wrote :
unless its got a disc full of crap.

At that age the drive may well be ailing. It will have been slow even
when new.

I am told it hasn't had much use since new. It was crawling to the point
of logging in, but I have managed to sort that out using a rebuild from
the hidden partition. Unfortunately it didn't do a restore to factory
and left the following rubbish in place and loading.

It loads various things when booting, including Premier Systems, Winzip
Driver and Webdiscover - grinding to almost an halt in the process. It
becomes so slow, it is impossible to use control panel to be able remove
them.

I seem unable to do a safe boot, or maybe I don't know how...

Which OS did it restore to? If 10, then there are number of ways going to
safe mode:

https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/h...s-in-safe-mode

It was Win10, but as described below - I have resolved it now, via
accessing safe mode. I'm not sure its a legitimate copy of Win10 though,
because it says 'activation required' in the bottom right hand corner.

Not all that bothered, but it still has a peculiar issue..

If set to hibernate, instead of sleep - it seems to go through the
hibernation process when the power button is pressed, but when coming out
of hibernation the screen remains black. It flashes up a photo, then black
again. It never gets to the login screen. Sleep, shut down and reboot all
work fine.

That may well be one of the issues that Lenovo warns about suggesting
you should use their Win10 distribution, not the standard one.

On Fri, 6 Mar 2020 05:01:36 +1100, John_j, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rodent Speed, wrote:

FLUSH senile cretin's troll****

05:01, you clinically insane asshole? And you've been up and trolling since
03:08! Can't you even TRY to hide what's the matter with you? BG

--
Marland revealing the senile sociopath's pathology:
"You have mentioned Alexa in a couple of threads recently, it is not a real
woman you know even if it is the only thing with a Female name that stays
around around while you talk it to it.
Poor sad git who has to resort to Usenet and electronic devices for any
interaction as all real people run a mile to get away from from you boring
them to death."
MID:

"alan_m" wrote in message
...
On 04/03/2020 11:45, John Rumm wrote:

Now swap out the HDD and replace with the SSD. That should get you a
system that will now likely be fast enough to use well enough to optimise
it a bit further.

In my experience a ssd makes very little difference to the speed of
windows,

Depends on whether you have enough physical ram
to avoid the use of the swap file once its booted and
do more than just email and browsing.

however in the past I've probably already optismed Windows for performance
rather than looks.

And I don't normally reboot unless I have to,
An SSD makes a big difference to a full reboot.

Some real time activities of virus checkers can really slow down a machine
especially those for the Norton/Mcafee stables which i now regard as just
as bad as a virus itself.

On 05/03/2020 13:16, alan_m wrote:
On 04/03/2020 11:45, John Rumm wrote:

Now swap out the HDD and replace with the SSD. That should get you a
system that will now likely be fast enough to use well enough to
optimise it a bit further.

In my experience a ssd makes very little difference to the speed of
windows, however in the past I've probably already optismed Windows for
performance rather than looks.


Which windows? And how do you define "speed of windows"?

I ask since its totally at odds with my experience in most cases - at
least for machines that are not crippled by lack of CPU power, or say
running the Win 7 Aero interface on stuff without the GPU oomph required.

I have found that anything typically Core2Duo/Win 7 or later will get a
substantial boost in speed on an SSD connected via a 6GB/sec SATA
interface. Applications that would take 20 secs to start from a HDD,
will usually load in 1 to 2 secs. Boots from cold to responsive that
used to take 5 mins down to 30 secs etc.

By way of example, I had a customer's 6 year old i3 box "on the shelf",
and they needed a hack gash machine for occasional office use. So I said
I would "refresh" it to be useable. I booted the thing and it took
*forever* to get started. Just uninstalling 4 or 5 unwanted bits of
software, and doing a disk clean up took over an hour. I then cloned it
onto a s/h SSD, and swapped the drives to then started an upgrade to 10
and do the rest of the setup. From the point it had the SSD in it, it
was like using a totally different machine. By the end it was quite
useable even for someone like me who detests slow machines.

Some real time activities of virus checkers can really slow down a
machine especially those for the Norton/Mcafee stables which i now
regard as just as bad as a virus itself.

There have been times where most AV programs have had a significant
impact, although in recent times the system load seems to have deceased
quite substantially for most of them.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Fri, 6 Mar 2020 05:29:31 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the senile cretin's latest troll****

05:29!!! LOL

--
Marland revealing the senile sociopath's pathology:
"You have mentioned Alexa in a couple of threads recently, it is not a real
woman you know even if it is the only thing with a Female name that stays
around around while you talk it to it.
Poor sad git who has to resort to Usenet and electronic devices for any
interaction as all real people run a mile to get away from from you boring
them to death."
MID:

On Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 7:06:52 PM UTC, John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2020 17:55, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I have asked to look at the above, which sort of runs, but in treacle
mode. Takes forever to boot up, press a button and it will maybe respond
5 minutes later.

There is a party trick I have seen some of these play where they
throttle back to a very low clock speed all the time. Going into the
BIOS and resetting to default BIOS settings will fix that one. (might
also be worth checking for BIOS upgrades while you are at it).

Having said that, its a slow machine to start with. About the only thing
you can do to make any real difference would be to clone the HDD onto a
SSD.

It has Win10 installed on it, it seems to have a reasonable spec.Â* I'm
wondering if there should be a recovery CD for it, or if anyone knows
where I could download from and burn a CD?

It will have a recovery partition. So you can recover to the supplied
image (which is unlikely to be Win 10).

Failing that you can download Win 10 from MS - just search for download
Win 10. That will get you the media creation tool which will either
upgrade the machine its being run on, or let you write a boot image to
USB or DVD.

For the utilities etc, there will likely be a tag number of some kind on
it that you may be able to use on the Lenovo web site to take you to the
right set of utilities.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being unbearably slow? The reasons must be known and easily fixable.

On 12/03/2020 08:06, John wrote:

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being
unbearably slow? The reasons must be known and easily fixable.

Depends a bit on what timescale you are talking about...

With older machines of the Core2duo era, the experience is frequently
pretty poor these days even if working at peak performance, simply
because the world of software has moved on. OS and Applications sizes
(and hence load times) and memory usage have increased vastly in the
last ten years or more. So disk performance has a big impact on
perceived speed of the machine, and old HDDs are going to suffer a
disproportionate hit. If because of the larger memory footprint you also
start paging sooner, you get a further big hit in performance. In more
recent times much software has gone 64 bit, and that again makes for
larger application sizes and in many cases memory use as well.

Increasing the RAM, and changing to a SSD can help greatly, but will not
necessarily fix all ills since CPU grunt is required for some things
that modern software expects to be able to do.

Modern usage is far more dependant on internet access speed - so poor
performance there will have a much bigger impact on system usability
than in the past.

Web content is also orders of magnitude larger than in the past - so the
memory and processing requirements for handling web pages has increased
in many cases to anything from 10x to 1000x what they were.

All that assumes the machine is running just what you want. Even modern
spec machines will slow if loaded with enough malware.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"John" wrote in message
...
On Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 7:06:52 PM UTC, John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2020 17:55, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I have asked to look at the above, which sort of runs, but in treacle
mode. Takes forever to boot up, press a button and it will maybe
respond
5 minutes later.

There is a party trick I have seen some of these play where they
throttle back to a very low clock speed all the time. Going into the
BIOS and resetting to default BIOS settings will fix that one. (might
also be worth checking for BIOS upgrades while you are at it).

Having said that, its a slow machine to start with. About the only thing
you can do to make any real difference would be to clone the HDD onto a
SSD.

It has Win10 installed on it, it seems to have a reasonable spec. I'm
wondering if there should be a recovery CD for it, or if anyone knows
where I could download from and burn a CD?

It will have a recovery partition. So you can recover to the supplied
image (which is unlikely to be Win 10).

Failing that you can download Win 10 from MS - just search for download
Win 10. That will get you the media creation tool which will either
upgrade the machine its being run on, or let you write a boot image to
USB or DVD.

For the utilities etc, there will likely be a tag number of some kind on
it that you may be able to use on the Lenovo web site to take you to the
right set of utilities.

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being unbearably
slow?

Mostly something program wise thrashing around
in the background using up lots of cpu resources.

The reasons must be known

Yes they are.

and easily fixable.

Can be a bit less easy with the worst of it when
you cant even run decent diagnostics because what
is thrashing around using up all the cpu resources
means that you cant even run the diagnostic and
they dont necessarily show up on the task manager.

On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 04:41:33 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH senile asshole's troll****

04:41??? Is it that time again, you trolling piece of ****? LOL

--
Website (from 2007) dedicated to the 86-year-old trolling senile
cretin from Oz:
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/

Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days. The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 12/03/2020 08:06, John wrote:

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being
unbearably slow? The reasons must be known and easily fixable.

Depends a bit on what timescale you are talking about...

With older machines of the Core2duo era, the experience is frequently
pretty poor these days even if working at peak performance, simply because
the world of software has moved on. OS and Applications sizes (and hence
load times) and memory usage have increased vastly in the last ten years
or more. So disk performance has a big impact on perceived speed of the
machine, and old HDDs are going to suffer a disproportionate hit. If
because of the larger memory footprint you also start paging sooner, you
get a further big hit in performance. In more recent times much software
has gone 64 bit, and that again makes for larger application sizes and in
many cases memory use as well.

Increasing the RAM, and changing to a SSD can help greatly, but will not
necessarily fix all ills since CPU grunt is required for some things that
modern software expects to be able to do.

Modern usage is far more dependant on internet access speed - so poor
performance there will have a much bigger impact on system usability than
in the past.

Web content is also orders of magnitude larger than in the past - so the
memory and processing requirements for handling web pages has increased in
many cases to anything from 10x to 1000x what they were.

All that assumes the machine is running just what you want. Even modern
spec machines will slow if loaded with enough malware.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make a huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox etc frequently, it's a huge ram hog.


NT

On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:49:51 PM UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make a huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox etc frequently, it's a huge ram hog.


NT

I see dual core processor laptops that are very fast when new, deteriorate to a snails pace in just loading up. The malware runs under Windows which is not yet loaded, yet the laptops still runs slow on bootup.

How do you get rid of malware? There are all sorts of companies saying they can transform a laptop by just buying their product. There is one that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic Windows operating system, that seems to work.

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

On 13/03/2020 13:49, John wrote:
Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?
very nearly.

Libre Office is more compatible with Word than most MS word programs,
since many older versions of Word can't read later Word documents.


--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.

"John" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:49:51 PM UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with
huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their
software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane
practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make a
huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox etc
frequently, it's a huge ram hog.

I see dual core processor laptops that are very fast when
new, deteriorate to a snails pace in just loading up. The
malware runs under Windows which is not yet loaded,
yet the laptops still runs slow on bootup.

Thats mostly the malware and trial crap loading as win boots.

How do you get rid of malware?

Identify it and delete it. Can be tricking removing it
tho, the worst of it reinstalls itself at the next boot.

It cant do that if you remove what installs it at the next boot.

There are all sorts of companies saying they can
transform a laptop by just buying their product.

Yeah, but bulk of them are just snake oil.

There is one that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic
Windows operating system, that seems to work.

Yeah, its certainly technically possible.

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing,

I prefer my word processing to not be very odd at all.

I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing
computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users.

Problem is that there are far fewer of those you
know who can help you if you have a problem.

Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

Yep. The compatibility can be very variable tho depending
on what you need. If you need to be able to edit any word
document that someone will ever send you, few of them are
completely bullet proof I that regard. But then thats just as
true between the various versions of Word itself.

On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 03:52:24 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH senile asshole's troll****

03:52??? LOL So, for HOW long have you been up and trolling this night
already, you clinically insane asshole? I'll quickly find out! BG

--
Marland answering senile Rodent's statement, "I don't leak":
"That¢s because so much **** and ****e emanates from your gob that there is
nothing left to exit normally, your arsehole has clammed shut through disuse
and the end of prick is only clear because you are such a ******."
Message-ID:

On Friday, 13 March 2020 13:49:27 UTC, John wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:49:51 PM UTC, tabby wrote:
On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:

Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make a huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox etc frequently, it's a huge ram hog.


NT

I see dual core processor laptops that are very fast when new, deteriorate to a snails pace in just loading up. The malware runs under Windows which is not yet loaded, yet the laptops still runs slow on bootup.

How do you get rid of malware? There are all sorts of companies saying they can transform a laptop by just buying their product. There is one that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic Windows operating system, that seems to work.

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

I've had a pentium 75 running win95 that ran at satisfactory speed, as long as only 2 or 3 apps were running. I forget what RAM it had, but not much. Plus various stuff from the P2 era that was fine. It's all down to software.. If you need to, get rid of all crapware & replace apps with lighter versions. If the OS itself is too fat, go for a lighter one. There's no lack of choice.

Asking whether linux can do word processing is the sort of question I'd expect to hear decades ago.


NT

John wrote:
On Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 7:06:52 PM UTC, John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2020 17:55, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I have asked to look at the above, which sort of runs, but in treacle
mode. Takes forever to boot up, press a button and it will maybe respond
5 minutes later.
There is a party trick I have seen some of these play where they
throttle back to a very low clock speed all the time. Going into the
BIOS and resetting to default BIOS settings will fix that one. (might
also be worth checking for BIOS upgrades while you are at it).

Having said that, its a slow machine to start with. About the only thing
you can do to make any real difference would be to clone the HDD onto a
SSD.

It has Win10 installed on it, it seems to have a reasonable spec. I'm
wondering if there should be a recovery CD for it, or if anyone knows
where I could download from and burn a CD?
It will have a recovery partition. So you can recover to the supplied
image (which is unlikely to be Win 10).

Failing that you can download Win 10 from MS - just search for download
Win 10. That will get you the media creation tool which will either
upgrade the machine its being run on, or let you write a boot image to
USB or DVD.

For the utilities etc, there will likely be a tag number of some kind on
it that you may be able to use on the Lenovo web site to take you to the
right set of utilities.

--
Cheers,

John.

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being unbearably slow?
The reasons must be known and easily fixable.

Run a copy of Process Monitor and find out.

On occasion, I've seen *10,000* registry accesses per second. They
repeat at 1 second intervals, some of these things. Even when the
registry is cached in RAM, this can't be good.

These have *nothing* to do with what you see on the screen.
Think of this as a "tax" you pay for modernity.

You don't really know how "busy" these newer OSes are, until you
look under the hood.

*******

Let's look at the B50-30

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo....123805.0.html

Processor Intel Celeron N2815 $107 tray price
Bay Trail 2 Core (no hyperthreading), 1.86GHz
Likely thermally limited. If no fan is present, will throttle.

Memory: 2048 MB (up to DDR3L 1066, OK)

"55.86%: Such a bad rating is rare. There exist hardly any notebooks,
which are rated worse." === notebookcheck rating

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-2-13-ghz.html

Cache = 1MB ("I'm not dead yet"...) # Only an issue when running 7ZIP compression
# Doesn't say what the L1 uses, which could be an issue
Max # of Memory Channels 2 # Means the memory bus is not gimped!
# This is important for snappy graphics
# (like if you unplug a DIMM)

Processor Graphics = "Intel HD Graphics for Intel Atom Processor Z3700 Series"
This is a 4 E.U. GPU as the built-in graphics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvermont

Scroll down the list here for Execution Units, and see just how low this is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocessing_units

8,10,12,24 The above is pretty low, but only needs to be able to
composite graphics windows into system memory (as the GPU
has no memory of its own). Only games would be horribly gimped.

What of Bay Trail. Well, you're in luck, as it's the first
generation of Atom to get "out-of-order (OoO) execution". The Atom
processors before this generation, were in-order execution, which
means in effect that the max number of instructions retired per
clock would be a lot lower. In-order execution means the instructions
are serialized, with more stalls.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...-architecture/

In-order execution was selected for the other ones, in the belief that
this would reduce power consumption. Which it probably did.

In the text here, you can see that Atom wasn't "pure" in-order. It
dabbled a bit in OoO. But only a bit.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2493/8

The concern is, does the next one claimed to be OoO also cheat ?
That's the $107 question.

You could run a bench on this device and find out. Let's just look some
up. Single threaded operation is used for a lot of everyday tasks, so
we'll use that. Now, I have a 2C 2T (no hyperthreading processor) too,
that I'm typing this on, so we can compare to that for fun.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

N2815 1.86GHz (plus turbo) Passmark CPUMark = 455 2C 2T
E8400 3.00GHz (no turbo!) Passmark CPUMark = 1218 2C 2T

Even though my CPU is 50% faster on clock, it's pretty close to 3X faster.
That means the IPC is about 2X better.

And more modern processors with the same clock range, would be
that much better again on IPC improvements (because they'd
include Hyperthreading for 30% more, plus be able to
retire more instructions per clock and have fewer bottlenecks).
Hyperthreading varies from -5% to +30% or so, and in some
cases, it can actually be better to turn it off in the BIOS.
Especially if the OS process scheduler is "defective" in some way.

I would need to downclock my E8400 quite a bit, to pull neck and
neck with the N2815. So low in fact, I might even be below the
recommended spec for Windows 10.

I have a single core laptop, running Windows 10, and it's no
wonder pony either. The Passmark on that one is

AMD V120 2.2Ghz (no turbo, single core) Passmark CPUMark = 665 1C 1T

and it's still 50% better. Mine is a single core, which means
the N2815 is ahead of it (some I/O can run on one core, while
a calc runs on the other core, for example).

I put an SSD drive in the laptop, and well, that's a joke. It
boots faster, but after that, it's a wash. The chipset is
only SATA II.

You could disable Windows Defender and get some of the
performance back. But is it worth doing that ? You decide.
Windows maintenance functions will not run on all cores,
and the maintenance is limited to using fewer cores so
something is left for the user. There is Windows Defender
and there is Search Indexer, wasting performance that could
be used reading the newspaper.

My laptop is also not running 1909 at the moment, and is
using an older version of Windows 10. You can also rip
Windows Update out of it, as an option. What fun. There's
a lot of fun to be had. Between TrustedInstaller and wuauserv,
they waste a lot of cycles during updates. Even checking for
updates wastes cycles.

Which is better, an unpatched, exploit-riddled older OS
that runs at a decent speed, or a bloated over-patched
modern OS ? Good question. How lucky do you feel ?
For best results, Windows 7 is recommended, just so
there is a choice amongst web browsers. And there's
DXVA2 so the movie decoder works. (This assumes the 4 E.U.
graphics *has* accelerated movie decoding.)

I'm surprised they charge $107 for that processor. Of course,
they charge $350 for some laptop processors, and we pay a
rather large premium for such things.

Paul

On 13/03/2020 13:49, John wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:49:51 PM UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots of redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make a huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox etc frequently, it's a huge ram hog.


NT

I see dual core processor laptops that are very fast when new, deteriorate to a snails pace in just loading up. The malware runs under Windows which is not yet loaded, yet the laptops still runs slow on bootup.

How do you get rid of malware? There are all sorts of companies saying they can transform a laptop by just buying their product. There is one that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic Windows operating system, that seems to work.

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?



Often computer speed is reduced if you have more than one real time
virus/malware checker running at the same time. For instance the win10
inbuilt checker may be running as well as Mcafee/Norton installed as a
package by the computer manufacturer/retailer.

With two programs now checking the disk in real time every time a file
is downloaded and/or written the processing of other data is likely to
get slower the more files you have, which may be orders of magnitude
more than when you purchased the machine.

The two checkers may be effectively fighting each other trying to gain
access to the same data at the same time.

Disable one of the virus checkers and.or just run it occasionally manually.

Many programs that are installed on Windows seem to want to be started
on boot-up when there is no real need to do so. They may want to phone
home every time the computer is booted to inform you that there ois an
update. Removing such requests from start-up may/will speed up the boot
time. On the same subject the disabling of automatic checks for updates
and an automatic install may also speed up a machine.

Does linux have a compatible Word processor: Libra Office (previously
Open Office) for Windows, Linux and Mac. Cheaper than Microsoft Office
in that it can be downloaded and used for free,
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/




--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On Saturday, 14 March 2020 03:24:28 UTC, Paul wrote:
John wrote:
On Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 7:06:52 PM UTC, John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2020 17:55, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I have asked to look at the above, which sort of runs, but in treacle
mode. Takes forever to boot up, press a button and it will maybe respond
5 minutes later.
There is a party trick I have seen some of these play where they
throttle back to a very low clock speed all the time. Going into the
BIOS and resetting to default BIOS settings will fix that one. (might
also be worth checking for BIOS upgrades while you are at it).

Having said that, its a slow machine to start with. About the only thing
you can do to make any real difference would be to clone the HDD onto a
SSD.

It has Win10 installed on it, it seems to have a reasonable spec. I'm
wondering if there should be a recovery CD for it, or if anyone knows
where I could download from and burn a CD?
It will have a recovery partition. So you can recover to the supplied
image (which is unlikely to be Win 10).

Failing that you can download Win 10 from MS - just search for download
Win 10. That will get you the media creation tool which will either
upgrade the machine its being run on, or let you write a boot image to
USB or DVD.

For the utilities etc, there will likely be a tag number of some kind on
it that you may be able to use on the Lenovo web site to take you to the
right set of utilities.

--
Cheers,

John.

Why do machines with fast multi-core processors end up being unbearably slow?
The reasons must be known and easily fixable.

Run a copy of Process Monitor and find out.

On occasion, I've seen *10,000* registry accesses per second. They
repeat at 1 second intervals, some of these things. Even when the
registry is cached in RAM, this can't be good.

These have *nothing* to do with what you see on the screen.
Think of this as a "tax" you pay for modernity.

You don't really know how "busy" these newer OSes are, until you
look under the hood.

*******

Let's look at the B50-30

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo....123805.0.html

Processor Intel Celeron N2815 $107 tray price
Bay Trail 2 Core (no hyperthreading), 1.86GHz
Likely thermally limited. If no fan is present, will throttle.

Memory: 2048 MB (up to DDR3L 1066, OK)

"55.86%: Such a bad rating is rare. There exist hardly any notebooks,
which are rated worse." === notebookcheck rating

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-2-13-ghz.html

Cache = 1MB ("I'm not dead yet"...) # Only an issue when running 7ZIP compression
# Doesn't say what the L1 uses, which could be an issue
Max # of Memory Channels 2 # Means the memory bus is not gimped!
# This is important for snappy graphics
# (like if you unplug a DIMM)

Processor Graphics = "Intel HD Graphics for Intel Atom Processor Z3700 Series"
This is a 4 E.U. GPU as the built-in graphics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvermont

Scroll down the list here for Execution Units, and see just how low this is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocessing_units

8,10,12,24 The above is pretty low, but only needs to be able to
composite graphics windows into system memory (as the GPU
has no memory of its own). Only games would be horribly gimped.

What of Bay Trail. Well, you're in luck, as it's the first
generation of Atom to get "out-of-order (OoO) execution". The Atom
processors before this generation, were in-order execution, which
means in effect that the max number of instructions retired per
clock would be a lot lower. In-order execution means the instructions
are serialized, with more stalls.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...-architecture/

In-order execution was selected for the other ones, in the belief that
this would reduce power consumption. Which it probably did.

In the text here, you can see that Atom wasn't "pure" in-order. It
dabbled a bit in OoO. But only a bit.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2493/8

The concern is, does the next one claimed to be OoO also cheat ?
That's the $107 question.

You could run a bench on this device and find out. Let's just look some
up. Single threaded operation is used for a lot of everyday tasks, so
we'll use that. Now, I have a 2C 2T (no hyperthreading processor) too,
that I'm typing this on, so we can compare to that for fun.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

N2815 1.86GHz (plus turbo) Passmark CPUMark = 455 2C 2T
E8400 3.00GHz (no turbo!) Passmark CPUMark = 1218 2C 2T

Even though my CPU is 50% faster on clock, it's pretty close to 3X faster.
That means the IPC is about 2X better.

And more modern processors with the same clock range, would be
that much better again on IPC improvements (because they'd
include Hyperthreading for 30% more, plus be able to
retire more instructions per clock and have fewer bottlenecks).
Hyperthreading varies from -5% to +30% or so, and in some
cases, it can actually be better to turn it off in the BIOS.
Especially if the OS process scheduler is "defective" in some way.

I would need to downclock my E8400 quite a bit, to pull neck and
neck with the N2815. So low in fact, I might even be below the
recommended spec for Windows 10.

I have a single core laptop, running Windows 10, and it's no
wonder pony either. The Passmark on that one is

AMD V120 2.2Ghz (no turbo, single core) Passmark CPUMark = 665 1C 1T

and it's still 50% better. Mine is a single core, which means
the N2815 is ahead of it (some I/O can run on one core, while
a calc runs on the other core, for example).

I put an SSD drive in the laptop, and well, that's a joke. It
boots faster, but after that, it's a wash. The chipset is
only SATA II.

You could disable Windows Defender and get some of the
performance back. But is it worth doing that ? You decide.
Windows maintenance functions will not run on all cores,
and the maintenance is limited to using fewer cores so
something is left for the user. There is Windows Defender
and there is Search Indexer, wasting performance that could
be used reading the newspaper.

My laptop is also not running 1909 at the moment, and is
using an older version of Windows 10. You can also rip
Windows Update out of it, as an option. What fun. There's
a lot of fun to be had. Between TrustedInstaller and wuauserv,
they waste a lot of cycles during updates. Even checking for
updates wastes cycles.

Which is better, an unpatched, exploit-riddled older OS
that runs at a decent speed, or a bloated over-patched
modern OS ? Good question. How lucky do you feel ?
For best results, Windows 7 is recommended, just so
there is a choice amongst web browsers. And there's
DXVA2 so the movie decoder works. (This assumes the 4 E.U.
graphics *has* accelerated movie decoding.)

I'm surprised they charge $107 for that processor. Of course,
they charge $350 for some laptop processors, and we pay a
rather large premium for such things.

Paul

In summary yes there's faster hardware. But the choice between
Which is better, an unpatched, exploit-riddled older OS
that runs at a decent speed, or a bloated over-patched
modern OS ? Good question. How lucky do you feel ?
is a false one. Such hardware has no speed issue running a suitable linux.


NT

Paul wrote:

Let's look at the B50-30
Â*Â* Celeron
^^^^^^^^ klaxxon

Â*Â* 2048 MB
^^^^^^^ klaxxon

On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 17:09:35 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

snip

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

snip

Asking whether linux can do word processing is the sort of question I'd expect to hear decades ago.


And that could still be the case. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 08:24:18 +0000, alan_m
wrote:

snip

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

snip

Does linux have a compatible Word processor:

Translation to fit the question: 'Does Linux have a Word compatible
Word processor. ;-)

Libra Office (previously
Open Office)

Do you mean Libra Office was previously Open Office or you are now
recommending LO over OO?

I though LO was spun out of OO and both carry on?

https://www.openoffice.org/
https://www.libreoffice.org/

for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Windows, Linux and Apple OS's. ;-)

Cheaper than Microsoft Office
in that it can be downloaded and used for free,
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

But to answer the OP's question of is it / are they MS Word
compatible, that can depend ...

In general and for most straightforward things then I would say yes.

You can open and edit a MS Word document and produce a document that
can be opened and edited by MS Word.

Just how well the formatting carries across can be an issue,
especially if it's a big document that may need some work to tidy (as
it can between different versions of Word to some degree of course).

Cheers, T i m

On 14/03/2020 08:24, alan_m wrote:
On 13/03/2020 13:49, John wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 10:49:51 PM UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 12 March 2020 19:37:15 UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa)Â* wrote:
Not malware exactly more demoware when you buy them these days.

that is malware

The first
thing any new user should do is strip it back to the core stuff, then
install what they want.

It is, however very wasteful, modern ways of creating software, with
huge
runtimes, loads of graphics and lots ofÂ* redundant routines in from
different programming environments that folk use to make their
software. Its
no wonder that much of it is only partly accessible.
Â* Brian

Use msconfig to prevent apps starting up at boot time. It's an insane
practice to run all apps all the time. A SSD rather than HDD can make
a huge difference - just keep the hdd for user data. Restart firefox
etc frequently, it's a huge ram hog.


NT

I see dual core processor laptops that are very fast when new,
deteriorate to a snails pace in just loading up. The malware runs
under Windows which is not yet loaded, yet the laptops still runs slow
on bootup.

How do you get rid of malware? There are all sorts of companies saying
they can transform a laptop by just buying their product. There is one
that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic Windows operating
system, that seems to work.

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I
suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with
malware which is targeted at Windows users.Â* Does Linux have Word
compatible word processors?



Often computer speed is reduced if you have more than one real time
virus/malware checker running at the same time. For instance the win10
inbuilt checker may be running as well as Mcafee/Norton installed as a
package by the computer manufacturer/retailer.

IME the Win10 AV software is quite good at stepping out of the way if
you have other software installed.

With two programs now checking the disk in real time every time a file
is downloaded and/or written the processing of other data is likely to
get slower the more files you have, which may be orders of magnitude
more than when you purchased the machine.

That doe snot really make sense. The quantity of files will have no real
impact on the preprocessing overhead of "on access" scanning. Something
that by definition only happens when a file is accesses.

Lots of files will mean that a schedules background scan will take
longer. However background scans are designed to run at lower priority
and consume minimal resources, and not compete with full screen
applications (e.g. games)

Many programs that are installed on Windows seem to want to be started
on boot-up when there is no real need to do so. They may want to phone
home every time the computer is booted to inform you that there ois an
update.Â* Removing such requests from start-up may/will speed up the boot
time. On the same subject the disabling of automatic checks for updates
and an automatic install may also speed up a machine.

Although if you are going to disable automatic checks, make sure that
you have an effective patching routine to ensure you are not running
applications with known critical vulnerabilities for extended periods of
time.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 14/03/2020 14:58, John Rumm wrote:

There is one that has Linux on a USB bypassing the problematic
Windows operating system, that seems to work.

Much like riding your bike gets round the problem of a non working car.
More like driving a new car gets round the problem of the chain having
fallen off your bike :-)


--
€œPeople believe certain stories because everyone important tells them,
and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them.
Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, ones
agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of
ones suitability to be taken seriously.€�

Paul Krugman

On 14/03/2020 15:06, John Rumm wrote:


Although if you are going to disable automatic checks, make sure that
you have an effective patching routine to ensure you are not running
applications with known critical vulnerabilities for extended periods of
time.


I take it you have never had the misfortune of working on a project and
when close to the deadline an automatic update results in a GUI change?


--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On Saturday, 14 March 2020 10:59:33 UTC, T i m wrote:
On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 17:09:35 -0700 (PDT), tabbypurr wrote:

snip

Most people want browsing, email and the odd word processing, I suppose Linux is good enough and gives a performing computer with malware which is targeted at Windows users. Does Linux have Word compatible word processors?

snip

Asking whether linux can do word processing is the sort of question I'd expect to hear decades ago.


And that could still be the case. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

maybe for folk without a clue. Not anyone else.

Update. Did a Google on slow Windows 10 laptops. I have a Lenovo 310 Ideapad, whic is excellent. Much comes up on the web, with most saying the same thing, like get rid of start up apps, get rid of clutter on the disk, defrag disk, go into some parts of OS to enhance performance, remove AVG anti-virus using only Defender, etc. I did, making a difference with it now workable, but still a lot slower than when new. I only use the browser and OpenOffice, no games or other apps. Also it is still slower booting up even before Windows has booted, so this indicates it is not a Windows problem alone, although I am sure Windows is the prime culprit in everyday running.

Some say fit an SSD as this will make it faster. An SSD will. However the underlying problems still are there, with the SSD sort of papering over the cracks. I want the root cause eliminated.

I have little faith in Windows considering installing Linux, as being UNIX it is more stable, professional and less prone to attacks. I am thinking of an SSD and Linux, so with my fibre broadband I assume it will be lighting fast to what I have now. A new Unix OS, SSD and fibre Internet access will be like buying a new laptop.

I asked if Linux word processors are "Word compatible". I know there are many free suites available. I am any new word processor to read and edit my old files and not ruin the document format. Professional word processing software these days are give away items.

Is Linux free or do you have to buy it? It needs to be downloaded onto an USB stick or come on a USB stick.

On 15/03/2020 12:27, John wrote:
I have little faith in Windows considering installing Linux, as being
UNIX it is more stable, professional and less prone to attacks. I am
thinking of an SSD and Linux, so with my fibre broadband I assume it
will be lighting fast to what I have now. A new Unix OS, SSD and
fibre Internet access will be like buying a new laptop.


It is pretty good provided you have at least 1GB RAM, 2GB is fine for
just one or tow apps at the same time.


I asked if Linux word processors are "Word compatible". I know there
are many free suites available. I am any new word processor to read
and edit my old files and not ruin the document format. Professional
word processing software these days are give away items.

Libre office can read most word docs, and write nearly compatible ones.
Chief problem is that unless you install all the windows fonts,
formatting wont be identical.

As far as Ca;lc/Excel goes some of te more recondite functions will not
be avaialable in lbre office, but 99.99% of te common stiff is, o its
usually fine to pp[en a spreadsheet.

Is Linux free or do you have to buy it? It needs to be downloaded
onto an USB stick or come on a USB stick.

Normally you would download and burn a DVD. Its free.

My advice would be to buy an SSD and a caddy to make the current disk
into an external USB drive.

Fit these, then download and burn a MINT DVD.

http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/w...e-64bit-v2.iso

Boot that, follow instructions
(https://linuxmint-installation-guide....io/en/latest/ ) and
install.


--
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher

On Sunday, 15 March 2020 12:27:43 UTC, John wrote:

Update. Did a Google on slow Windows 10 laptops. I have a Lenovo 310 Ideapad, whic is excellent. Much comes up on the web, with most saying the same thing, like get rid of start up apps, get rid of clutter on the disk, defrag disk, go into some parts of OS to enhance performance, remove AVG anti-virus using only Defender, etc. I did, making a difference with it now workable, but still a lot slower than when new. I only use the browser and OpenOffice, no games or other apps. Also it is still slower booting up even before Windows has booted, so this indicates it is not a Windows problem alone, although I am sure Windows is the prime culprit in everyday running.

Some say fit an SSD as this will make it faster. An SSD will. However the underlying problems still are there, with the SSD sort of papering over the cracks. I want the root cause eliminated.

The root cause is inevitably software (all of it, including OS). But you can still much improve performance with an ssd, whether you sort the software or not. Especially if the lappie only has 2G RAM and is therefore swapfiling - HDDs are abysmal at that.


I have little faith in Windows considering installing Linux, as being UNIX it is more stable, professional and less prone to attacks. I am thinking of an SSD and Linux, so with my fibre broadband I assume it will be lighting fast to what I have now. A new Unix OS, SSD and fibre Internet access will be like buying a new laptop.

I asked if Linux word processors are "Word compatible". I know there are many free suites available. I am any new word processor to read and edit my old files and not ruin the document format. Professional word processing software these days are give away items.

I gather linux WP is about as compatible as Win WP is. I'm not a power word user though, there's probably more to it than I know. Use compatible file types of course.

Is Linux free or do you have to buy it? It needs to be downloaded onto an USB stick or come on a USB stick.

Free, download it. Mint is a very popular place to start, but pick a LTS version & avoid fat versions eg cinnamon. There are substantially faster lighter linux distros that you might prefer if you want to get the best out of it.


NT

John wrote

Update. Did a Google on slow Windows 10 laptops.
I have Lenovo 310 Ideapad, whic is excellent.

Much comes up on the web, with most saying
the same thing, like get rid of start up apps,

Thats sensible.

get rid of clutter on the disk,

That makes no sense, it isnt what slows the system down.

defrag disk,

Ditto in spades.

go into some parts of OS to enhance performance,

What ?

remove AVG anti-virus using only Defender, etc.

I did, making a difference with it now workable,
but still a lot slower than when new. I only use the
browser and OpenOffice, no games or other apps.

Which browser ? Some can slow things down a lot.

Also it is still slower booting up even before Windows has
booted, so this indicates it is not a Windows problem alone,

No it doesnt. Win does load a hell of a
lot of stuff before it allows you to use it.

although I am sure Windows is the
prime culprit in everyday running.

Its more likely to be something you are still running.

Some say fit an SSD as this will make it faster. An SSD will.

Only with some things like how quickly it
boots and how quickly it starts big apps.

However the underlying problems still are there,
with the SSD sort of papering over the cracks.

Only of you dont have enough physical ram
and its swapping a lot more than it should.

How much physical ram has that system got ?

I want the root cause eliminated.

May or may not be possible.

I have little faith in Windows considering installing
Linux, as being UNIX it is more stable, professional

Thats very arguable.

and less prone to attacks.

But those are trivially avoidable.

I am thinking of an SSD and Linux, so
with my fibre broadband I assume it
will be lighting fast to what I have now.

It wont be, particularly with the browsing.

A new Unix OS, SSD and fibre Internet
access will be like buying a new laptop.

Fraid not.

I asked if Linux word processors are "Word compatible".
I know there are many free suites available. I am any
new word processor to read and edit my old files and
not ruin the document format. Professional word
processing software these days are give away items.

Depends on what you mean by professional word processing.

Is Linux free

Most of them are.

or do you have to buy it?

Nope.

It needs to be downloaded onto an USB stick

Nope. It can be downloaded to your current win system.

or come on a USB stick.

It can do but not for free.

Your other problem is that there isnt just one Linux,
there are dozens of common ones and lots more less
commonly used ones with some radically different user
interfaces and ease of installation by someone like you.

On 14/03/2020 16:15, alan_m wrote:
On 14/03/2020 15:06, John Rumm wrote:


Although if you are going to disable automatic checks, make sure that
you have an effective patching routine to ensure you are not running
applications with known critical vulnerabilities for extended periods
of time.


I take it you have never had the misfortune of working on a project and
when close to the deadline an automatic update results in a GUI change?

While I have had updates result in changes to UI features, I have not
had any show stopping incidents. I have however had machines in effect
deny service by deciding to do updates at unexpected times. Not so much
of an issue on a quick machine, but can be an issue if working on
ancient kit belonging to a customer etc.

None of that is an argument for disabling updates permanently though.
Getting a machine completely hosed by a known and patched critical
security vulnerability is even more annoying I would expect.

With earlier versions of windows electing to automatically download but
*not* install until instructed was usually the safest way forward. With
10, go for the pro version and you still have some control over when
updates are installed, and can also postpone installation for a period
of days if you are mid project.

IME the most annoying problems of that nature I experienced was with a
third party graphics / publishing app, that decided to cease working at
a critical moment one Friday night, and required a re-install to fix it.

After that it refused to work completely without reactivation, and there
was no way of doing that online (this was some years back), but insisted
on needing a phone call or email to the publisher. The call had to be
during (US) business hours, which needless to say, would not be until a
day after the job had to be complete! That application got relegated to
don't bother using again pile!



--
Cheers,

John.

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On 15/03/2020 12:27, John wrote:
Update. Did a Google on slow Windows 10 laptops. I have a Lenovo 310
Ideapad, whic is excellent. Much comes up on the web, with most
saying the same thing, like get rid of start up apps, get rid of
clutter on the disk, defrag disk, go into some parts of OS to enhance
performance, remove AVG anti-virus using only Defender, etc. I did,
making a difference with it now workable, but still a lot slower than
when new. I only use the browser and OpenOffice, no games or other
apps. Also it is still slower booting up even before Windows has
booted, so this indicates it is not a Windows problem alone, although
I am sure Windows is the prime culprit in everyday running.

Some say fit an SSD as this will make it faster. An SSD will. However
the underlying problems still are there, with the SSD sort of
papering over the cracks. I want the root cause eliminated.

In most respects the "cracks" are just the natural progression of
software getting bigger and slower. IMHO it really is pointless running
a spinning rust drive for OS and apps these days, given the massive
speed boost of a decent SSD.

I have little faith in Windows considering installing Linux, as being
UNIX it is more stable, professional and less prone to attacks. I am
thinking of an SSD and Linux, so with my fibre broadband I assume it
will be lighting fast to what I have now. A new Unix OS, SSD and
fibre Internet access will be like buying a new laptop.

I asked if Linux word processors are "Word compatible". I know there
are many free suites available. I am any new word processor to read
and edit my old files and not ruin the document format. Professional
word processing software these days are give away items.

It does depend a bit on what you mean by word compatible... If you mean
just at the file interoperability level, then "mostly". Note that there
is also no hard and fast guarantee that even different versions of word
will round trip a document without some subtle alteration to the format
or layout. Even opening a doc with a different default printer driver
selected can alter it.

If however you mean compatible in that it has the same UI, then no
(although that is not a bad thing IMHO!).

If you mean will it play nice with third party applications that use
word as an embedded editor for handling their data, then again, usually not.

Is Linux free or do you have to buy it?

Can be either. You can get paid for supported versions and free
equivalents. Most home users would opt for a non paid one. Larger
corporates will often go for the paid versions because they have far
more proactive support and patch management (and the cost of the license
is only a small part of TCO in the bigger picture).

It needs to be downloaded
onto an USB stick or come on a USB stick.

You can usually download as a disk image or .ISO file and make your own
installation media.


--
Cheers,

John.

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