Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

[shovenose]

First off, I have NO IDEA why anybody would sell a system new with ONLY 256MB of RAM!!! I mean of course I've seen it in Dells and Compaqa...but it's just utterly stupid.
Maybe back then SP1 of XP was less of a memory hog?
Anyway, I got a Toughbook CF-28 yesterday. It's got an 800MHz Pentium III and 256MB of RAM. and it's SLOW!!!
It was decent before I installed Firefox, Comodo Anti-Virus, Adobe reader, flash player, etc...
Now it's terrible.
I guess my question is what can I do to make it work with 256MB?

[ratdude747]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

strip comodo and use avast.

also, use auslogics defrag... after a lot of installs your hdd (which may be a slow 4200 RPM drive) may have fragments that can make or break your system. I actually had this happen with a dell latitude with a pentium M... and it had a 5400 RPM drive.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Yeah its a 40gb 4200rpm drive I stuck in there. Earlier I tried to uninstall my lovely Comoros but there was an error message so I think I'm stuck with it! I will try that defrag later, thank you.

[dood]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

In a P-III laptop, 256mb was probably pretty generous from the factory. Especially in a toughbook, where the prices were already at a premium due to their ruggedized nature.

The 4200rpm drive is dragging you down, too... I don't think you'll get the performance you want out of it with that hardware combination.

[ratdude747]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

In a P-III laptop, 256mb was probably pretty generous from the factory. Especially in a toughbook, where the prices were already at a premium due to their ruggedized nature.

The 4200rpm drive is dragging you down, too... I don't think you'll get the performance you want out of it with that hardware combination.

agreed.

I would suggest an enclosure for the existing hdd (4200 rpm is good for enclosure use) and a 5400 rpm hdd to put in the laptop.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

I'm considering putting the 32GB SSD I have in my IBM ThinkPad X31 into the ToughBook...then it would be truly unbreakable :-)
But I'm only going to do that if I can get the other main issue I have with this computer fixed. I'll post that eventually.
Oh and now I uninstalled Comodo and I'm going to not have any anti-virus. I can already notice the speed difference,

[pentium]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Can you not upgrade the memory on this thing?

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

IDK...Lol. I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to try it after I install all the drivers.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Alright, meanwhile here is my other issue.
The screen is like lacking in color and has too little blue and too much green. Or something like that. I'll show y'all a pic in a minute...any idea what's causing this?
Thanks.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Alright here's a pic:

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Crap! It won't take PC100...only PC133...what a shame. I've got this nie 256MB module of PC100 but when I turn it on it doesn't recognize it :-(

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

I tried running XP in 256MB but gave up. Even 512MB gives a huge performance boost, and my 466MHz Socket 370 Celeron system with 512MB ran XP faster than a 2.8GHz Pentium4 with 256MB.

[c_hegge]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

It should be dirt cheap if you can find some used stuff on fleabay. I outrightly refuse to sell ANY computer with less than 1GB of ram for XP and 2GB for vistrash or 7.

EDIT: The screen issue sounds like it could be a CCFL problem. On an older laptop, that wouldn't surprise me, (depending on the usage it had before you got it). you'd probably have to replace the screen to fix it.

[dood]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

My guess is that the TFT wasn't that precise to begin with.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Update:
-Blazing fast with Windows 2000 and a 32GB SSD!
-Battiries Plus would have charged me $115 for the damn battery. I can't buy it on eBay and I'm unwilling to spend $100+ on this old thing.
-XP =/= touchscreen. I'll try the touchscreen drivers, etc. on 2000 and see if I can get it to work.

@c_hegge & dood: how would I test the backlight? thanks!

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

haha touchscreens are SO FUn!!! guess what I'm on right nw :P

[ratdude747]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Crap! It won't take PC100...only PC133...what a shame. I've got this nie 256MB module of PC100 but when I turn it on it doesn't recognize it :-(

PM sent.

[shovenose]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

PM sent.

[momaka]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

Oh and now I uninstalled Comodo and I'm going to not have any anti-virus. I can already notice the speed difference,

Good choice there.
Most anti-virus programs do more harm than good anyways. I rather get my PC infected and then clean it myself instead of have an AV scan for hours (and sometimes not find anything when the PC is clearly infected).

I've been running pretty much all of my computers (which are all Pentium 3 or AMD equivalent in speed except for one) without AV. The only computer on which I have AV is my download box because I'm a bit reckless on it sometimes. But I'm considering removing the AV even on that one. It's just been getting on my nerves lately, especially when trying to open a CD, only to find Avast! trying to scan the whole thing before I can access it.

First off, I have NO IDEA why anybody would sell a system new with ONLY 256MB of RAM!!! I mean of course I've seen it in Dells and Compaqa...but it's just utterly stupid.
Maybe back then SP1 of XP was less of a memory hog?

XP was never a memory hog, even with SP2 and SP3. In most cases, XP will use 120 MB or less if there are no other startup programs. The computer I'm sitting on right now, for example, has SP2 and it uses whopping 90 MB of RAM when it boots. And my PIII laptop - 86 MB. Even with a bunch of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents open, I still never broke past 200 MB.

So as you can see, XP has no problems running on old hardware. The real problem comes when you try to use some of that "new" software. Many programs are so bloated nowadays that it's just too sad to discuss. And don't get me started on .NET or FLASH.

I just installed XP on a new-to-me computer the other day - Pentium 4 with 256 MB or RAM, 40 GB HDD, and FX5600 video card. I was able to run games like Collin McRae Rally 4 and Need For Speed Underground/Underground 2 without a hiccup. Went on CNet and a few other flash-bloated websites after that, and the computer went pretty much all to shit. CPU at 100% use and RAM maxed out in just a few seconds.

Anyways, enough of those rants...
256 MB isn't a whole lot, but if you are not going to surf the web much on that computer, it should be more than enough.
Also, if you still end up using the old slow HDD in that Toughbook, make the pagefile smaller, like 128-192 MB. This will slightly shift the memory usage in XP from the pagefile to the RAM.

[c_hegge]

Re: Panasonic Toughbook slow, messed up, etc.

@momaka - Shame on you for discouraging Anti-Virus

FWIW, I use norton on all my PCs. It may be payware, but it's effective and VERY light on memory, and never scans unless you leave the PC alone for like 15 mins.