Dell Inspiron 1200

[phillipchandler100]

Hi Everyone.

Im really keen to use pclinuxos kde, as I like the way it looks and I like the attitude of a lot of the users.

Ive got a dell inspiron 1200 (1.2gig speed) with one gig of ram and an intel 915gsm graphics card. Id like some tips and advice on how to speed things up so its slick.
I know about switching off all the desktop effects, not having (unwanted) stuff load at boot. I specifically just want thunderbird, firefox, stellalrium, kmymoney and potherth as standard.

So would anyone have any other tips and tricks ?

Thanks
Phillip

[dougmack]

I have an older Dell Inspiron, and I found out that I could double the memory by adding a supplementary card.  Check your documentation and see if you can also double the memory.
This is not (at least for my Dell) a standard memory stick, but one designed for the Dell laptop. That will not speed up everything, but it should speed up some complex programs.  I also
upgraded the hard drive, which has nothing to do with speed, but now I could put several OSs on it to test out.  Your hd might be big enough already--mine was only 60GB. 

I think the Dell is a nice machine, with a decent keyboard for a laptop and a good display.  Using it at home, I connect an external kb (an IBM from the year 1 with a ps2 to USB adapter)
and a trackball, both via a USB 4-port hub.  When I do that, I have to momentarily disconnect the kb on boot, or it won't see all the keys.

--doug

[The Chief]

You might want to try out the LXDE and Xfce versions - very light weight and should be snappier than KDE.

[phillipchandler100]

You might want to try out the LXDE and Xfce versions - very light weight and should be snappier than KDE.

Ive looked at those, and although they are fast and would work, I like my nice looking menu and a bit of gui candy :-)))))
But Id consider them in the future, but they just look too win 3.x ish, well to me anyway.

[phillipchandler100]

I have an older Dell Inspiron, and I found out that I could double the memory by adding a supplementary card.  Check your documentation and see if you can also double the memory.
This is not (at least for my Dell) a standard memory stick, but one designed for the Dell laptop. That will not speed up everything, but it should speed up some complex programs.  I also
upgraded the hard drive, which has nothing to do with speed, but now I could put several OSs on it to test out.  Your hd might be big enough already--mine was only 60GB. 

I usually go to orca logic and they have a great util for windows, which checks your machine to see exactly what you can have in your mem slots. But alas no mem checker for linux. But Im sure the bloke is "On the ball" and knows his stuff, so will look to see if I can get a 2gig stick.

[old_guy]

Phillip

You may want to hold up on things - Stellarium (as well as several other things - related to OpenGL ?) are not working and it doesn't look like any answer for them has been found.

Earl

[phillipchandler100]

Phillip

You may want to hold up on things - Stellarium (as well as several other things - related to OpenGL ?) are not working and it doesn't look like any answer for them has been found.

Earl

Hi Earl.
Thats worth knowing, thank you for that.