1gig of RAM isn't likely enough and is the primary cause of your delays. Double it or remove some of your startup stuff.
You can probably speed things up tremendously by reinstalling the OS; certainly as much as a new computer, anyway. There have been no big improvements in SATA lately, so that's probably as fast as you can do disk-wise with a new machine. For single threaded apps that's still a fine machine, but for video and math you may want to get one of the newer multicore cpus. For apps written to take advantage of them, like most video apps, they'll speed up rendering 2X or 4X. But you'll still be *editing* at 1X! :( On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have an older Dell XPS Gen 2 computer with Windows XP Home --3 GHz Pentium > 4, 1 Meg DDRAM, about 1.5 terabytes disk drives, about 250 GB internal: the > rest external. Very, very many applications, most used frequently. These > include graphics, video processing, mathematical processing (e.g., Matlab), > but not many video games. > > I've noticed that the computer has slowed down a lot from the original > purchase 5 years ago. The main reason for slow down is (I think) the disk > drives. The internal disk drives are all SATA (about 250 GB). Mostly I > have to wait for the drives to complete operation to get a response on any > application, such as browser or word processor. I have already checked to > see if disk caching, SMART, and disc test software can find a problem, but > these report none. > If I buy a new computer, will the disk delay be expected to improve > significantly? ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
