I
Itinerantscholar
I bought a Dell Inspiron 1501 with Vista on it. It has the typical
performance problems that have been noted for laptops running Vista. It
receives a "Windows Experience Index" of 2.0.
The first thing you are told to do to improve performance is eliminate
programs from startup. But when I go through the long list of programs, I
often can't tell what they do. For instance, I see in this list "Avantquest
Digital Line Detection," "Dell Quick Set," "Synaptics Pointing Device," and
"Java (TM) Platform SE 6U5," among many others. Do I just start
experimenting and see what happens when I turn them off? That seems very
risky. After all, that "pointing device"--that's my touchpad, isn't it? If
I turned off my touchpad, I think my computer would be useless to me, because
I do not know how to turn the touchpad on again without the touchpad.
In short: is there a way to know which programs would be the best ones to
turn off? In case it is not already obvious, I do not know a lot about
computers. My experience with Vista has been frustrating, because I feel
like I do not have the specialized technical training required to make my
laptop work well.
performance problems that have been noted for laptops running Vista. It
receives a "Windows Experience Index" of 2.0.
The first thing you are told to do to improve performance is eliminate
programs from startup. But when I go through the long list of programs, I
often can't tell what they do. For instance, I see in this list "Avantquest
Digital Line Detection," "Dell Quick Set," "Synaptics Pointing Device," and
"Java (TM) Platform SE 6U5," among many others. Do I just start
experimenting and see what happens when I turn them off? That seems very
risky. After all, that "pointing device"--that's my touchpad, isn't it? If
I turned off my touchpad, I think my computer would be useless to me, because
I do not know how to turn the touchpad on again without the touchpad.
In short: is there a way to know which programs would be the best ones to
turn off? In case it is not already obvious, I do not know a lot about
computers. My experience with Vista has been frustrating, because I feel
like I do not have the specialized technical training required to make my
laptop work well.