Toshiba Laptop - A New Lease on Life

My Toshiba laptop has been quite the trooper. I have taken it to school everyday for the past 2 years, and it still keeps kicking. It had got quite slow though, and I was this close to giving in and buying a new computer.

Instead I decided to make the one I had better.

I first reformatted the hard drive, and brought the computer back to its original state.

This made a world of difference because computers tend to slow down after awhile from drive fragmentation and issues with registry entries (and other mumbo jumbo).

It was still slow though, so I decided to look at upgrading my RAM. To my surprise, RAM is cheaper then the last time I checked. It cost me $70 for 4GB of RAM.

The truth is there has not been much innovation in laptop computers in the past two years. RAM and hard drive space has gotten cheaper, and because of this, new computers have more of them.

Processors have hit a peak though. My Intel Core Duo processor is relatively the same as the one you get in a new computer. The reason is that processors have got as fast as they can until the next big technological breakthrough comes along. So what manufacturers have done is put two processors together to be able to run more applications at once. The problem with this approach for laptops is power. It takes double the power to run two processors which means your battery life will be affected. This is why there are quad processors for desktops, but still only duo (2) for laptops.

The RAM installation took about 2 minutes, and is so easy anyone could do it...seriously, anyone.

www.crucial.com - The Memory Experts, was a very informative site about what type of RAM my machine could take. Try their Crucial System Scanner Tool to see what RAM is in your computer already, and your upgrade options. You don't have to buy your RAM from them, but their prices are very competitive if you don't mind waiting for shipping.

Chrome vs. Firefox vs. Safari vs. Opera Memory Usage

Dot Net Perls created a thorough test that concludes Firefox 3.5 is by far the least memory consuming browser.

Surprisingly even better than Google's Chrome browser. Even with the new competition in the browser space, Firefox still remains relevant to browsing consumers.

Note: The test used some pre-released versions, and excluded Internet Explorer because it was acting finicky (who would have guessed?)

Gmail tree theme during lightning

I usually like the simple look of the default Gmail, but recently I've been using the "Tree" theme.

If you tell it what city you live in, it changes the look depending on the weather outside your door.

Check out this screen shot during a storm...

Go to settings, themes to have a look for yourself.