New AO751h owner, help me speed this thing up

I just bought an Acer 751h with vista basic installed, 1.33 mHz, 250 gb, 2 g ram. I've read about removing preloaded software and others who say you can make this machine faster and more efficient. Any tips and help would be appreciated as I'm quite a computer newb. Thanks

 

Here's what I'd do as a start if I wanted to do the same thing:

*Update all drivers (and BIOS) to latest spec
*Hunt through the Programs and Features list to remove anything that remotely looks like bloatware, for example, just about anything labelled Acer, Cyberlink, Macaffee etc. You could goto an extreme and remove EVERYTHING from this list, but then you'll have to locate and install your preferred antivirus, as well as codec packs, alternate browsers, Office etc etc
*Start -> Run -> MSCONFIG -> use this utility to disable any "Services" marked as non-microsoft (tick the box to hide all MS Services then stop the others from loading)
Use the same application to disable un-necessary startup items

This all leads to as much of a clean-slate as possible without reinstalling, which brings me to my next point.

To get the most out of Windows 7 you'll pretty much want to do a complete clean-install of the operating system. This will ensure there is absolutely no bloatware in the system. A further step would be trying to use V-Lite to remove components from the installation, preventing them from being installed. Less resources used the better.

 

Thanks.. I have vista now, not windows 7. No money to upgrade at the moment. Am I better to down grade to XP?

 

It depends really on what you are planning on doing with the computer. In my experience, the drivers are much better for vista. It is a little bit slower than XP though in responsiveness, however I think you get choppier video in XP.
Do you have the 2 gigs of ram or the 1 gig?
You could also do a little more tweaking to your system to get some more performance out of it. If you have an SD card or a flash drive laying around you can insert it and use the Readyboost feature on it. That should be somewhat faster than using the hard drive for cache access.
Also if you right click on computer in the start menu, and choose properties it will bring up another window. Choose advanced system settings on the left hand side of that window. There should be a section in this new window that says Performance. Click settings there. Click the advanced tab. Go to where it says virtual memory and click change. Change it from system managed size to a custom size. Change both the minimum and maximum to about double what your ram is and save. When Windows has to change the size of the virtual memory file size, it really slows down the system.
Also you can most likely delete whatever anti-virus you have installed. They are memory hogs. There is a product from Microsoft called Security Essentials. It is rated just as well as most of the popular anti-virus programs and doesn't take a bit hit on your resources. I have personally used this and have had no ill effects from it and all my computers are still virus free (even verified with other programs just to make sure)
Keep in mind that anti-spyware/anti-malware programs also significantly slow down your computer. In some cases even slower than what the spyware would have done in the first place and the windows tools are good enough for most situations. Also turning off the AERO functions (if you have that version of windows) will speed it up. If you really like the transparancy, there is a script called HideBlur that will make it take a TON less memory.
I'm not sure if you use the Windows Sidebar at all, but it is a memory hog too. Make sure to choose the options on that program and disable it starting when you boot the computer.
If you update to the newest video drivers (you can find links to those in another post in this forum) that will also help quite a bit.

Personally I would stick with the Vista instead of XP. Xp in antique and in many ways no where near as good as Vista. Besides when you do finally get the money for a Windows 7 upgrade, you cannot directly upgrade from XP to 7. But you can from Vista to 7.
Also, you should try using Google Chrome or Safari or Opera as your browser. Internet Explorer and Firefox are all slower than dirt. I personally use Google Chrome.
I know these last tips might seem like no brainers, but click on the battery icon and select high performance. Also you can go into the control panel for the graphics adapter and select high performance there too.
Hopefully that is enough to get you a usable system

 

Microsoft has a pretty good starting point. This link will take you to a Microsoft page where you can download a PDF document that covers a lot of information. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...98-a637-432c-a3c8-1607ab629201&displaylang=en

This site has some more ideas that also help. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2110595,00.asp specifically with disabling things like table services, remote computing, fax services, and other thing you do not and never will need on a netbook.

After doing most of the things suggested above I am pretty happy with the Vista performance on my AO751h. It is obviously still not fast, but it is at least livable.