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New (to me) Computer

ZiprHead

ZiprHead

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I bought a used HP Mini 5103 on eBay. I intend to use it to run diagnostic and control software to communicate with my BMW.

It is ssssllllloooooooowwww. It has 2 gigs of RAM and according to HP that is the maximum that it can take. I've heard this many times before and the answer was always yes, you can add more RAM and it will work. BTW, this uses the Intel Atom processor.

Do you think more RAM will work in this?

I also intend to upgrade to an SSD in the future too.
 
That computer is eleven years old and was the lowest end laptop available. I'm not surprised that it is incredibly slow - even eleven years ago it would have been slow.

Recently I bought a core i5 laptop with 8 Gb of RAM for A$200 though it has some physical damage. You should get a computer with those specs as a minimum.
 
My other HP laptop is a good bit older, 8 gigs RAM and an SSD and purrs along quite quickly. I chose the mini because it's small. Trying to work from the driver's side on a 17" laptop in a compact car is is no easy task. I just have four programs I will need to run, all designed for Windows XP.
 
For something small maybe get a second hand Surface (with a keyboard that can connect to it) or a tablet.... I think Surface can run Windows. You could search for "small laptop"... there should be some mid-range ones - rather than getting the cheap and nasty ones....
 
I can get an 8 gig sodimm for 28 bucks so I'm going to go that route.

ETA: I'm going to try an SSD first. Just got one for 18 bucks.
 
Last edited:
You can try putting 4GB module into it. Chances are, it will see 3GB of it. At least that's what happened with my Atom notebook.
CPU is slow but it has 2 cores and 4 threads. These last Atoms are actually 64 bit and but they are locked to 32 bit by BIOS.
in 64 bit you would have seen 4GB memory,
 
Defrag the disc may give you some increase in speed.

Check your start up file and see what's running in the back ground and what can be safely deleted.
 
barbos said:
Coleman Smith said:
Defrag the disc may give you some increase in speed.

Check your start up file and see what's running in the back ground and what can be safely deleted.
Click to expand...
We know why it's slow - Atom and only 2GB RAM, but mainly Atom.
Click to expand...
I agree that it needs more memory.

In the interim he may get some more speed by defragging the disc and eliminating unnecessary background programs.
 
Coleman Smith said:
Defrag the disc may give you some increase in speed.

Check your start up file and see what's running in the back ground and what can be safely deleted.
Click to expand...
Apparently SSDs should not be defragged: (just in case anyone wanted to)

Why You Shouldn't Defragment a Solid State Hard Drive

Defragmenting a traditional hard disk drive is considered standard maintenance due to the way the spinning platters and read/write heads move when
www.electronicsweekly.com www.electronicsweekly.com
it can cause unnecessary wear and tear which will reduce its life span. Nevertheless, because of the efficient way in which SSD technology functions, defragmentation to improve performance is not actually required

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Last | Ontrack Blog

Ontrack discusses SSDs, physical faults, malfunctioning controller and storage chips, and hazards of recovering data with data recovery software.
www.ontrack.com www.ontrack.com
SSDs have a built-in “time of death”. To keep it simple: An electric effect results from the fact that data can only be written on a storage cell inside the chips between approximately 3.000 and 100.000 times during its lifetime. After that, the cells “forget” new data. Because of this fact – and to prevent certain cells from getting used all the time while others aren´t – the manufacturers use ‘Wear-Leveling-Algorithms’ to distribute data evenly over all cells by the controller.

My teacher in an intermediate computer course told the class about not defragging SSDs.
 
ZiprHead said:
I can get an 8 gig sodimm for 28 bucks
Click to expand...
That would be waste of money and gigabytes. As I said, you can see maximum 3-3.5 GB of it.
It appears that you are running WinXP and few tiny programs. In that case 2GB is more than enough.
Atom is just slow, and its graphics is very slow too. Nothing can be done.
Also, i am not sure WinXP can do SMP. If that's the case then it would be basically 800Mhz Pentium 3 computer. (20 year old computer)


....
yep, XP Home does not support SMP, and XP Pro supports only 2 CPUs (Your Atom has 4)
 
Last edited:
barbos said:
ZiprHead said:
I can get an 8 gig sodimm for 28 bucks
Click to expand...
That would be waste of money and gigabytes. As I said, you can see maximum 3-3.5 GB of it.
It appears that you are running WinXP and few tiny programs. In that case 2GB is more than enough.
Atom is just slow, and its graphics is very slow too. Nothing can be done.
Also, i am not sure WinXP can do SMP. If that's the case then it would be basically 800Mhz Pentium 3 computer. (20 year old computer)


....
yep, XP Home does not support SMP, and XP Pro supports only 2 CPUs (Your Atom has 4)
Click to expand...
Yes, I did some checking and found that out myself. But thank you for the confirmation. Much appreciated.

I've got a 4 gig sodimm in my warch file on eBay.
 
barbos said:
ZiprHead said:
I can get an 8 gig sodimm for 28 bucks
Click to expand...
That would be waste of money and gigabytes. As I said, you can see maximum 3-3.5 GB of it.
It appears that you are running WinXP and few tiny programs. In that case 2GB is more than enough.
Atom is just slow, and its graphics is very slow too. Nothing can be done.
Also, i am not sure WinXP can do SMP. If that's the case then it would be basically 800Mhz Pentium 3 computer. (20 year old computer)


....
yep, XP Home does not support SMP, and XP Pro supports only 2 CPUs (Your Atom has 4)
Click to expand...
Nope, not running win xp, The diagnostic programs I need to run were designed for win xp. They stopped making e46 BMWs after 2005 model year and that's what these programs are designed to run on.

It came with a fresh install of win 7. I updated it to 10 yesterday out of curiosity and everything seems to run fine, still just as slow though.
 
excreationist said:
Coleman Smith said:
Defrag the disc may give you some increase in speed.

Check your start up file and see what's running in the back ground and what can be safely deleted.
Click to expand...
Apparently SSDs should not be defragged: (just in case anyone wanted to)

Why You Shouldn't Defragment a Solid State Hard Drive

Defragmenting a traditional hard disk drive is considered standard maintenance due to the way the spinning platters and read/write heads move when
www.electronicsweekly.com www.electronicsweekly.com
it can cause unnecessary wear and tear which will reduce its life span. Nevertheless, because of the efficient way in which SSD technology functions, defragmentation to improve performance is not actually required

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Last | Ontrack Blog

Ontrack discusses SSDs, physical faults, malfunctioning controller and storage chips, and hazards of recovering data with data recovery software.
www.ontrack.com www.ontrack.com
SSDs have a built-in “time of death”. To keep it simple: An electric effect results from the fact that data can only be written on a storage cell inside the chips between approximately 3.000 and 100.000 times during its lifetime. After that, the cells “forget” new data. Because of this fact – and to prevent certain cells from getting used all the time while others aren´t – the manufacturers use ‘Wear-Leveling-Algorithms’ to distribute data evenly over all cells by the controller.

My teacher in an intermediate computer course told the class about not defragging SSDs.
Click to expand...
ZipHead said he's considering getting and SSD in the future.

I was suggesting defragging the current disc.
 
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