E1505 laptop runs slow

Hi,

I purchased a E1505 laptop (my first laptop) and a Celeron D desktop system from Dell recently.

E1505 Laptop: 2.0Ghz Intel dual core processor, 512MB memory, 256MB x1400 video card. 7200RPM HDD
Celeron D Desktop: 2.5Ghz Intel Celeron D processor, 512MB memory, intergrated Intel video. 7200RPM HDD

I received both systems yesterday, after setting them up and running, I noticed that the Celeron D desktop system runs considerably faster in general tasks (not gaming), the boot-up time is noticeably faster on Celeron D desktop system, and the overall performance just feels more smooth on the Celeron system end (moving mouse, typing, scrolling, etc.).

The Celeron D is a 2.5Ghz processor while the E1505 has a 2.0Ghz processor, I understand there is a 0.5ghz difference in CPU speed, but E1505 is dual core with the same amount of 512MB memory and a dedicated x1400 video card. Shouldn't it at least run as fast as the Celeron D system?

My biggest gripe with my laptop is that the responsive time is kind of slow and it always takes longer to load an application compared to my Celeron D desktop. But with its impressive specs the E1505 should handle most general applications with ease, so why the sluggish feel? Is this normal for a laptop?

Any feedbacks are welcome. Thanks.

 

Did you reformat the Dell or remove the bloatware yet?

 

I have the same complaint even after having completely reformatted. The only thing I have installed is anti-virus, defender (MS), Office, and Dell's quickset and Intel's pro wireless. For whatever reason, I have almost 55 process upon a fully bootup. I have to decide where to cut back. Initially, I chalked it up to the 5400 drive, but you experience the same thing. We'll see what more RAM will do in the first place, but this system is a dog compared to my desktop with very similar specs, albeit for the faster drive.

It does seem that MCE is also somewhat of a background hog as well. I don't know where all these used processes are coming from.

 

no, I haven't reformatted or removed any program yet, but both my laptop and desktop have similar Dell programs preinstalled, the Celeron D desktop still seem to run faster than E1505 laptop.

 

Remember, your desktop is Dual Core too

 

My E1505 is super responsive, I don't know why yours would be like that out of the box? Have you flashed the BIOS?

 

Celeron D is dual core? are you serious?

I only pay $340 for my celeron D desktop, and I paid $1150 for my E1505! I heard the Celeron D system doesn't even qualify for Windows Vista's requirement. It's disappointing to see E1505 can't even keep up with the entry level desktop Celeron D.

 

No, I havn't flashed BIOS yet, might give it a try. Did you also reformat your hard drive or uninstall the Dell softwares? What's your system's specs?

 

My E1505 has almost the same specs as yours. The only difference is I have 1gig of ram and the x1300 video card. Mine runs normal stuff in a blink of an eye. There is like zero response time for most normal programs (MS office, fire fox, WMP, ect) I have reformatted and installed XP pro but it was only slightly slower before I did that. I don't know what the problem is but I don't think it is normal.

Adam

 

Is there a program I can benchmark my laptop and compare it with other's results?

 

What did you think the D stood for? Celeron Dork Edition?

 

http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/ do it for 2 million digits. My computer did it in 1min 17s yours should be pretty close to that.

Adam

 

Whoa whoa whoa, hold up a second here. From what I understand, the Celeron D is not dual core. The "D" moniker on the Celeron does not denote Dual Core, unlike with the Pentiums.

Pardon me if I'm incorrect on this. I've seen several tidbits here and there denoting that the Celeron D is not dual core; and while its a very unscientific method, I noticed that all listing of Celeron D processors on Newegg list it as Single Core. Intel's product description of the Celeron D also makes no mention of it, but again, I defer to more knowledgeable users.

 

Lukin,

Thanks for that benchmark site. E1505 Dual 1.66ghz, 512 mem, Integrated vid, 60 gb 7200 rpm.

1min 42sec on battery
1min 48sec on AC Test #1
1min 43sec on AC Test #2

Pentium 4 2.8 ghz with 512 mb Dell desktop
1min 57sec


As for Elderly's above post, I believe I agree with you. Although "Celeron Dork edition" did crack me up...

Inc

 

Yeah Celeron is not a Duo Core.

 

I think the "D" is a generational marker to seperate it from the previous less popular celerons. They are not Dual Core.

 

The D of Celeron D stands for Desktop.
The M of Celeron M stands for mobile.

 

Well, then I apologize...

I was going after such items as Pentium D, makes no sense whatsoever. I have never touched, nor will I anything Celeron. However, I am familiar with Pentium D and assumed (wrongly, I suppose) that the D after Celeron meant the same.

 

I wouldn't sweat it, it's not like Intel is running around yelling at people for getting it incorrect. I have a feeling a noticable percentage of Celeron D's sold are probably due to that error.

Kind of like how everyone goes around calling processors "Centrinos". I have a feeling the guys at Intel aren't exactly losing any sleep over it.

 

Is that with a 2.0Ghz core duo?

My 1.3 Celeron M takes 2m 37s with everything on full power, 5m 27 with everything turned down (for battery life).

 

Ya 2Ghz core duo with computer pluged in

 

My Super PI Mod test score (2 million digits) is 1m 23sec. Is that good or bad? I haven't reformatted my hard drive yet.

Updated: after uninstalling AOL, McAfee, and a few other programs, I ran the PI test again and I got 1m 13sec (on both battery or AC plugged).

Does this test stress CPU speed, hard drive, graphics card, memory, or overall system performance?

Thanks.

 

I've had my E1505 for about 6 weeks and it's LIGHTNING fast and I have had almost NO problems with it right out of the box. I only have T2400 1.8 Duo Core with 1gig of RAM and a whisper quiet 7200RPM 60gig hard drive. I don't feel knowledgable enough to try a reformat so I'm just uninstalled several bloatware items and used Start-Run-msconfig-and on Startup tab, unchecked a lot of bloatware. I've no troubles so far so I don't plan to reformat unless I absolutely have to.

My system boots in about 40 seconds and everything runs in the blink of an eye. Honest. The very first thing i did when I opened up the E1505 was uninstall McAfee. Slow, tedious, ineffective and same with Norton. I've used free AVG which seemed pretty fast, but based on a few threads here, I've tried trial of ESET's NOD32 antivirus and I've been virus-free with a very fast boot, so I'd try uninstalling your antivirus and trying a another package.

Try at least uninstalling bloatware, changing your startup, and making sure your antivirus is not slowing things down by using to much CPU when scanning. and changing your startup. There is a GREAT thread somewhere in the Dell forum here about what items to uninstall and why. Search for it. This is a quick and easy try at fixing your problem. If it doesn't work, then you can always try the reformat, but honestly if an uninstall doesn't vastly improve things, then I would guess something else is wrong. Good luck - may the force be with you.

 

Thanks a lot!

What I noticed was that once the computer boots to desktop, for some reason the mouse pointer still keeps loading and loading...it seems there is something running in the background, it takes another 10 seconds or so before the mouse pointer finally settles down. I suspect it's probably McAfee, or the wireless software, or other programs, any idea?

updated: I removed McAfee, now the boot-up time is about 40 seconds.

Do you recommend ESET's NOD32 Antivirus over AVG?

On AVG Grisoft site, it shows the trial version is good for 30 days. Why do I keep hearing AVG is free?

BTW, does anyone know any other free popular benchmark programs out there I can download and test my system? Thanks.

 

for some reason the mouse pointer still keeps loading and loading

That sound like you have lot of things loading up wile u start the laptop, i suggest using msconfig and removing most things in your start up menu , will make a huge difference.Also to reformat your machine it doesnt take any expertise to do it=) I had a dell xps m170 laptop for a wile , i freshly installed xp pro on it and it was a breeze, dell site has all the drivers u need.You should defenetly look into doing that.
I found that most antivirus program out there will slow and mess up my pc, i never use antivirus or spyware etc.. lol i know call me crazy, but i mostly play games and till now i never really had a big problem that a quick 25 min reformat couldnt fix, then if you one of those guys that liek to keep lot of stuff on the pc , then a reformat will be painfull =)

 

Thanks for the advice. I tried the msconfig command, it showed like 20 items under the Startup menu, but if I acess the Startup menu by clicking "Start->All Programs->Startup", I could only see 3 items listed. That's kind of weird. Do I just uncheck the items that I don't want Windows to initilize during boot-up? How do I know which Startup items are critical and I have to leave them checked?

 

MSCONFIG use to work well for older FAT32 exclusive operating systems like Windows 98, but it's not going to list every running process in modern operating systems like XP.

I myself prefer to hand edit my Windows registry to permanently remove the garbage that starts automaticly aftewr your system boots and slows you way down. This approach may not be for everyone, but just about anything you'd ever want to know about editing your registry can be found here, this web site has been around for years and have compiled a great data base of registry editing information, they were the original registry editing web site...

http://www.regedit.com/

As far as your other question about what can you safely kill from startup, no matter what method you decide to use everything in the startup is safe to kill.

Another method for killing running processes on your computer and speeding things up in Windows XP is to Right Click on your START button, then choose PROPERTIES from the menu.

In the Start Menu TAB Click Start Menu, then choose CUSTOMIZE

a new Window will open up, in this new Window click the ADVANCE tab and you'll see a list named "Start menu items:"

Scroll down to the bottom of that list and you'll see an option for "SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION TOOLS which is turned off by default, select to "DISPLAY ON THE ALL PROGRAMS MENU" and click ok getting yourself back out of there.

Now left click on your START button and you'll have a new option there that you didn't have before when you go to All Programs. You'll see it there called Administrative Tools, go to it and then click on SERVICES

Here you will get a true view of all the stuff your computer is currently starting and running, and how different things start and run, either Automatic or Manual, or Disabled. Clicking on each "service" will give you an option to just stop it, or change how it runs. Here is where you have true control over how fast your system is going to boot and run.

Don't guess what a service is though just by what you think the name means, some actual Windows services required to operate your system can have names that will throw you off and make you think they are something else. Like "Messenger" for example, most people think this is that stupid MSN Messenger program you use for online chatting, it's not, trust me. If you expand the slide bars in the Services MMC Window you'll see a description of what each item is and does, somewhat.

Another great resource for helping you figure out what something running like a .exe file and you aren't sure what it is, what it does, and if its safe to remove or not can be found at this great web site who have a pretty good library off different file names you can click on and get more information about what exactly the .exe or what ever file is there for and doing...

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/

The "Services" MMC (Microsoft Management Console) though is the most powerful tool you have for gaining control of your WIndows XP system. If your not sure even after reading the service description what a service is there for and if you can kill or permanently disable it, then do a search using the services name and find more information on it.

 

Im not to sure wich are critical or not hehe , i dont think any are really critical unless u need some of those to start up with windows. I have always disabled everithyng in there lol and it runs good. You can always enable them again.
On my desktop PC i have only 8 items in start up and they are all disabled and runs just fine.

 

If you'd rather not mess with the registry, I used Startup Inspector and TuneXP to clean out msconfig and maximize bootup. TuneXP has a nice "maximize bootup" utility that anyalyzes bootup and moves the files to spped things up. Both are free.

Make sure you set a restore point before, just in case.

Dave

 

AVG is the best

http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/

 

My E1505 (T2400 - 1.8Ghz Duo) with X1400 (256MB ATI card) and 60GB 7200 RPM did a 2M @ 1:20. Not too bad at all. That is after a fresh XP Home install (no tuning done).

My desktop at work (Pentium 4 2.8Ghz w HT) did it @ 2:10. I conclude that Duo Core is not twice (but close) as fast as HT or older Pentium 4.

 

Not to hijack this thread, but after spending a day researching different antivirus software options and reading reviews, comparing scores, I decided to go with BitDefender 9. Below are few links that compare and score. There are pros and cons to each (BitDefender serves my needs well, updates few times a day, many features, even through on-demand scanning is slower then some of the competition). Anyways... just my 2 cents.

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124475,00.asp