Help Understanding My Netbook Speed!

[moggie 939]

I have a Samsung Netbook which seems reasonably fast - although I would like a faster one!
It says it is 4gb ram and 1.5ghZ speed whatever that means.

I tried a new Acer netbook the other day because it looked smaller - but I was so disappointed with it as it was so slow I sent it back, It said it was 1 gb ram but do not know what speed.

I only judged it by the time it took to bring up pages when I googled them which is quite good with m Samsung. The Acer 'pants'

Both had Windows 7 Home Premium installed. I realise I will not get as good a speed as full size expensive laptop, but can anyone explain the differences and my best options.

Thanks

[Mamyalynne]

Have reported and asked to be moved so sorry

[VHG]

Is it your computer that is slow or your broadband?

If the computer is slow ONLY when you are using the internet (web pages take a long time to load) then it is probably your broadband that is slow.

So you could have the fastest computer in the world but if your broadband is slow the pages will still take a long time to load.

To answer your specific questions, the 1.5ghz refers to the speed the CPU works at, so in most cases the higher the number the faster the CPU.

I have a desktop PC and the CPU on mine runs at 3.3ghz so quite a bit faster. So a 1.5ghz CPU is quite slow.

Note that laptops and notebooks often have slow CPUs in them to use less battery life (the faster the CPU the more battery it uses).

However the speed of the CPU is only one factor in the performance of a computer and it can be influenced by a number of other components (hard disk, graphics card etc).

In terms of RAM 1GB is very small and probably not really enough to run Windows 7, it needs about 3Gb or 4Gb as a minimum. Again the more RAM you have the faster the PC will go, though once you go above a certain amount of RAM it wont go any faster.

If you use your laptop connected to the mains most of the time then buy one with the fastest CPU you can, also a "good" graphics card will show video better.

Generally you get what you pay for.

[moggie 939]

Thanks VHG

No - my broadband consistently gives me 17 -20mb!

I chose a small notebook so that I can take it on holidays overseas as I have tried but just can't get on with android tablets!

Thanks for your advice