Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

My thinkpad is running very slow. There are too many process which run in the background, esp the default thinkpad ones.

I have a X60s thinkpad with 1.6Gz and 512 memory. I use it mostly with MSoffice softwares and browsing.

If you can help with suggestion on how to improve the speed I would be grateful.

Regards,
santosh

Adding memory will likely be a big help. One way to check for sure is to look in the Task Manager, and see if your peak memory usage has exceeded your total physical memory -- this would cause it to page out to disk a lot, and make your system feel sluggish.

In the Performance tab, if the Commit Charge - Peak figure is higher than your Physical Memory - Total, installing more RAM will give you a dramatic improvement in performance.

(You may need to leave task manager running for a while as you work, so it gathers the memory history data.. I'm not sure. I usually leave task manager running minimised and hidden all of the time)

thanks, as you said the peak in the commit charge is higher than the total physical memory and I guess adding more RAM will help.

I have added a 1GB stick to have 1.5GB ram.
Very happy. Good enough to play WoW =D

You mean you have added a flash memory stick and it works as RAM? How?

No, no sorry. Laptop was configured as 512MB only and I ordered an additional 1GB RAM. Total being 1.5GB RAM.

Unfortunately, 2GB RAM stick are crazy expensive

You should be able to get your commit charge well under 1GB when your system is idle. At idle I have 45 processes using 338MB of ram. Even with the graphics card taking maximum memory, you should have 500MB of physical memory left to work with.

I've done the same. 512MB stock config + 1GB module = 1.5GB for now.

I figure that by the time I actually need more than 1.5GB of RAM, 2GB modules will have gone down in price to something reasonable, and one can replace the 512MB one to give an upgrade to 3GB -- which is also just below the limit where memory-mapped devices prevent a full 4GB from being used.

Except we loose Dual Channel

Thanks guy, I think for now I should get more RAM, but the IBM original is pretty expensive. Hopefull the prices will come down. Do you have any idea about USB rams. It should be cool to make it work as RAM for the thinkpad when you need more speed and take it out when you dont, but speed is the main problem. You may find this interesting:
http://ask-leo.com/can_i_use_a_usb_ram_ ... emory.html

Useful under Vista but except Vista.. forget it.