I love my Windows netbook for many reasons: it’s cheap, small, lightweight, and it does most things a laptop or desktop PC does.
However, I hate my netbook when it’s running slow or even freezes to death. Well, maybe I’m a bit demanding.
I understand that hardware configuration in a netbook is incomparable to that of a laptop or a desktop PC. But is there any way to make it suck less and not affect work productivity?
Here we’re going to share with you several tips to make a netbook faster again.
Contents
1. Fewer Startup Items
I couldn’t believe it the first time I got my netbook, it was loaded with lots of bloatware. What is bloatware? Basically, they are useless third-party software that tends to make your computer sluggish.
Most of the time they are pre-installed on your netbook by the manufacturer. What’s more annoying is that they are usually added to the startup list by default.
Thus every time you boot up Windows, they automatically join the fun and slow down your netbook. See here or here for user reports.
What to do? Remove all the bloatware and disable as many auto-startup items as possible.
Not only this will help speed up your netbook startup time, but it also eases the hardware (CPU, memory, etc.) as more system resources could be allocated to deal with other computing tasks.
2. Clean up Netbook Hard Drive
A netbook is usually equipped with a small volume hard drive. That means it can get filled up more quickly than standard laptops. What can you do? Clean it up on a regular basis.
Sure, you can do this manually by transferring large files, uninstalling applications, etc. But that would be quite time-consuming.
If you prefer a more effective way, try a PC cleaner program that does all the tasks for you automatically, such as optimizing startups, cleaning registries, uninstalling apps, etc.
3. Use Lightweight Applications
Remember again, you are not using a laptop or desktop, the more applications you install, the less likely you’ll be able to maintain a decent level of free disk space.
Also, if you multitask — opening a number of programs at the same time, chances are your netbook will freeze more often. So try not to install new programs, unless you need them badly.
Also, be selective to certain applications. What do I mean? Well, some software is poorly developed, and while running, they tend to consume more system resources than other light-weighted alternatives.
Case and point, I used to use Firefox but later switched to Chrome because Firefox tended to take up more valuable resources.
4. Fix Windows 10 Issues
Your netbook is probably running under Windows 10 operating system, right? If so, it’s inevitable that over time Windows system gets littered and has registry issues. If that’s the case, the overall performance of your netbook will bog down.
How to fix that? You can use Optimize Drives, a system optimization utility that does what it says — taking care of your netbook system and making sure it’s error-free.
5. Have Better Web Browsing Habits
If you are like me, who uses a netbook mainly to deal with emails and surf the Internet. Be aware that you might be using your netbook the wrong way when you are browsing the net.
What do I mean? I was used to opening multiple web pages and windows, at first, it was okay, but gradually the Internet started to hang a lot. A quick performance analysis revealed that some web pages are consuming more CPUs and memory than they should.
The lesson I learned — always close web pages I finish viewing and avoid loading “heavy” pages from magazine sites as much as I could.
6. Restart Your Netbook More Often
This tip may sound a no-brainer, but it works amazingly well. Many times even if I have closed all apps and services, my netbook is still slow. Often a simple restart seems to clear everything.
I guess a netbook is like a man; you get tired after working for a few hours without a break. So be kind to your netbook.
Final Words
You’re not going to get a lot of speed out of a small cheap netbook, especially if it loads lower-end hardware (CPU, RAM, HDD). But, that does not mean you should experience performance issues.
With the tuneup tips and tricks introduced above, I hope your netbook now runs faster.
Note: if your netbook is aging and it still lags after you’ve applied all the above techniques. Most likely it’s time to upgrade the hardware. For example, replacing the HDD (hard disk drive) with a new SSD (solid-state drive) would speed up your netbook dramatically.
