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Bloody Windows

August 18th, 2016 · Posted by Skuds in Technology · No Comments · Technology

I have a laptop. I know. Everybody has one these days, but I can remember when that was something to brag about. It is 6 or 7 years old but should still be OK for basic tasks. The trouble is that it doesn’t get used very often. I fired it up yesterday for probably the first time in six months.

You know what is coming don’t you? It was as slow as anything, and a look at task manager (which took ages to start up) showed disk usage of 100% and CPU and memory usage hovering above 90% and reaching 100% a lot even though I hadn’t opened anything. I was thinking I should get a new one, but can’t really justify getting a new laptop to just gather dust. Well… I can justify it to myself but not to the Mrs.

Then I realised. It is probably just months worth of updates and patches to the OS and drivers and programs, and then all the optimisation to go with it. This is the downside of having computers that are always connected to the internet while they are on and have a very needy and attention-seeking operating system!

A day later and disk usage and CPU are negligible, while memory usage is around 57%. If I leave it on for another day it will probably be just about OK, then I’ll have to go through the whole thing again in six months when I try to use it again.

I could always just use it, I suppose. Or upgrade it. A replacement might be unjustifiable, but an SSD and doubling the RAM to 4GB could be an option.

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