T23 too slow to be usable

[mattbiernat]

Hi guys,
I have a t23 in a very good condition. It has 256RAM but it seems that now flash, most browsers and even Skype have become quite memory hungry. So at this point the machine has become as slow as a pig. I believe the major bottleneck is RAM and video card which is only 16mb. I am not going to pay $50-60 for another RAM module, especially that with 16mb video card things wouldn't become much faster.
So what can I do with this laptop?

[ajkula66]

You can find 1GB of RAM for a lot less than $50-60...which would be the value of an average T23 nowadays...

[rkawakami]

A quick peek on eBay for 512MB PC133 modules says that some can be had for $15 shipped using Buy-It-Now. So for $30, less if you get lucky on auctions or find a pair like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/300740305034 ($25), you can max out the memory at 1GB. That should improve your system's speed a little bit but as you note, video will still be a significant bottleneck.

Some things which you can do to speed things up without spending any $$$:

- defrag the hard drive
- consider changing browsers
- consider changing antivirus program
- examine what processes are running in the background and terminate those you don't need

Despite the T23 being one of my favorite systems, I actually haven't been using one for several months. Both home and work systems are now being covered by A31p. It wasn't anything to do with the speed or responsiveness; I simply needed the extra screen real estate (UXGA vs. SXGA+) for an application I've been using.

[mattbiernat]

I am actually running a very custom set up on this thinkpad.
- no antivirus
- lots of services terminated
- chrome browser
My total RAM usage is 120mb.

[ac12]

With less than 512MB of RAM, I got tired of waiting while the drive thrashed the swap file. So I maxed my T23 w 1G of RAM.
Not great compared to newer faster machines, but quite usable (for me).

And yes I notice that the stuff running on various web sites just pig down the response on the older computers like the T23. There are times I've seen the CPU up at 100% while displaying some web pages.
My G40 with 2GB of RAM and 2.2GHz CPU also hits 100% CPU on some web pages.

Skype is just barely usable on my T23. I have a low resolution webcam, which helps reduce the video processing load on the CPU.

Some of the things I also did was:
- Shut down the all the dang autoupdates (Windows, Goggle and any other).
You can't control when they run, and they usually run when you start up, right when you want to use your computer. And they pig down these older computers.
I manually run updates, so I control WHEN they run.
- Do not run too many things at the same time, or you will not use up the RAM, and start swapping the page file.
- Use Task Manager to find what is using memory and remove/shut those programs down, if possible. Or find alternative programs that don't use as much memory.

And trying to do a Windows update with less than 512MB is PAINFULLY SLOW.
The drive just thrashes the page file.

gud luk

[mib404]

Flash ads/content makes the CPU to run at 100%. T23 has only 16MB of video memory, that is not enough to play Flash ads/content from websites.