Is it worth upgrading my Acer Aspire One?

[HovR]

I'd be shocked if you really couldn't tell any major performance increase from upgrading your netbook from 1GB to 2GB ram. What OS are you running?

I recently bought a netbook, as it is easier to take on the bike than my laptop, and the upgrade to 2GB ram was like night and day. It was practically unusable with 1GB of ram (running Win7).

To me this would indicate you have other issues you are not aware of that are still taking up all of your ram despite the upgrade (e.g. a plethora of startup programs running in the background, malware/spyware, fragmented HDD slowing down read/write times, a huge collection of temporary files that need to be removed.)

 

[Matthew_T]

I am running Win7 Starter (if the starter has anything to do with it). I have seen an increase in performance though. It is starting up quicker and opens programmes quicker. I still have the matter of getting more storage though. I am currently in the process of filtering through files I dont need and removing them, so that is creating some much needed room (I am going on holiday next month and will be taking lots of photos).

 

[HovR]

I am running Win7 Starter (if the starter has anything to do with it). I have seen an increase in performance though. It is starting up quicker and opens programmes quicker. I still have the matter of getting more storage though. I am currently in the process of filtering through files I dont need and removing them, so that is creating some much needed room (I am going on holiday next month and will be taking lots of photos).

To prevent high resolution images and video taking up a lot of my internal hard drive space, I only store the last 2 years of photos and videos on my internal hard drive. Everything else (10 years+ worth) goes on my external portable hard drive, which I can easily access if I want to view the images.

Raw, unprocessed HD video either gets deleted (after I have processed it in Sony Vegas), or put on the external hard drive.

Download and run CCleaner. It's a good system tool to remove all of the trash your computer collects but doesn't really need, and can free up a surprising amount of memory.

 

[HovR]

Oh, and another useful piece of software to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive is WinDirStat.

It analyzes your hard drive, and finds out which are the largest files, and where they are saved so you can determine whether they are needed or not. It also gives a graphical representation of your HDD usage, which is also fairly useful.

(Just don't delete any system files.. I can't remember if it includes them in the search or not.)

 

[MichaelM]

External drives: http://www.tesco.com/direct/technology-gaming/external-hard-drives/cat3374674.cat?catId=4294960074 maybe someone knows a cheaper source.

Try a "lite" version of Linux e.g Ubuntu Light: http://www.canonical.com/engineering-services/oem-services/why-ubuntu/products or Linux Mint Elysia (if I can get Ubuntu running...)

 

[Matthew_T]

Okay, I have drawn up a shortlist of the hard drives which i am most likely to be looking at.

Intenso 320GB - £36.66 – BT - http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/pr...ory-station-2-5--external-hdd-black-74DH.html

Intenso 500GB - £41.66 – BT - http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/pr...ory-station-2-5--external-hdd-black-71PZ.html
Verbatim 500GB - £46.66 – BT - http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/pr...-3-0-2-5--portable-hard-drive-black-82M4.html
Intenso 500GB - £46.99 – PIX Mania - http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/11986490/art/intenso/memory-board-portable-ext.html

Intenso 640GB - £49.98 – Amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intenso-600...7?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1339685022&sr=1-557

Buffalo 1TB - £58.33 – BT - http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/pr...estation-usb-2-0-desktop-hard-drive-7G8W.html

I dont think I will go the 1TB ones but I dont know whether to go for a 500GB or the 640GB?