It’s surprising that netbook nowadays (as of August 2011) are becoming more popular in terms of usage. It is also much more affordable today to buy a netbook with 1.6GHz to 2.5GHz processor speed which is already using Intel Dual core technology with 2GB of RAM.
Most of these netbooks are powered using Windows 7 operating system. Netbooks are smaller than laptops with typical 10.1inch screen. Also the trend in using netbooks for audio recording are increasing.
This guide will walk you through some optimization tips for your netbook. The objective is to make it run as fast as possible when doing audio processing task by optimizing RAM usage. In addition, your overall netbook speed and performance will be maximized.
This tutorial will be illustrating the tips using one of the commonly used netbooks which is ASUS EeePC netbook Seashell series (10.1 in)
The most important optimizing factor in speeding up your netbook is your RAM usage. Random access memory (RAM) is very important when doing audio recording because any digital audio bits are temporarily stored in RAM for easy accessing by CPU.
Yet even though you have 2GB of RAM, a typical RAM usage of netbook in an un-optimized environment will be running around 1GB to 1.5GB for a shared video memory environment. So if you start any audio recording task, you will have very little RAM space left and your netbook processes starts to slow down. Below are the suggested tweaks:
1.) “Disable” or set to “Manual” some of the Windows services. You can download this guide. To use that guide, simply unzip it and open it with any PDF reader. Then it list down completely what are those Windows 7 services that can be safely turn to “Manual” or “Disabled”. It is very clear in the screenshot provided.
In your netbook, simply go to “Start” – “Control Panel” then click “Administrative tools”. After that double click “Services”. Adjust those services based on what is recommended on the PDF guide. After all are implemented, restart your Windows 7. It is important to note that some of the services are required for normal operation such as print spooler so leave it set to manual but “started” if you are always using a printer.
2.) Install Minimem RAM optimization tool. You can download it here.
Restart your netbook after the installation.
3.) Disable all graphics and aero features in Windows 7. Go to “Start” – “Control Panel” – “System” – then in your left click “Advanced System Settings”. Go to “Advanced” then under “Performance” click “Settings”. Click the radio button “Adjust for best performance”. Apply it and click OK. Of course after implementing this setting your Windows 7 appearance looks very simple and not flashy as before. Remember that you are sacrificing these appearance features to make your netbook run/operate faster.
4.) Minimize the start up programs to a minimum. Go to Start, under “Search programs and files” click “msconfig”. When you see the results, click on it. Go to “Startup” tab and then uncheck the following items:
a.) Adobe reader
b.) Adobe Acrobat
c.) Yahoo messenger
d.) Sidebar
e.) Skype
f.) Bluetooth software (if you are not by default using Bluetooth)
Click “Apply” and then restart your netbook.
5.) Turn those Windows features that are not important to audio recording to save some memory and disk usage. Go to Start – Control Panel – click “Programs and features” and then on your left, click “Turn Windows features on or off”. Wait until all items are loaded. Uncheck those that are not important, see the screenshot below for some guide:
Windows features that can be turn on and turn off
6.) If you plan to do an audio recording, you need to close any other programs that you are not using. For example browsers and other software. This consume a lot of system resources. If you are using Antivirus, set them to “game mode” to avoid them using lots of RAM space. And do not run its scanner while doing any memory intensive task.
7.) If you have extra USB sticks (not used), you can use them as extra RAM using the Windows 7 feature “Ready Boost”. You can read more details about that here.
8.) Clean all unneeded files and waste in your Windows 7 netbook using Ccleaner. You can download it here.
9.) In your desktop, close any remaining gadgets or sidebars except the ASUS on the top which are important to provide updates to your BIOS and other operations.
10.) Finally restart everything, wait for one minute to stabilize. Below is the final and optimized RAM usage of the netbook following the above suggestions:
RAM usage for Windows 7 Netbook task manager
And this is how the desktop of the optimized netbook would look like:
Windows 7 starter desktop optimized for RAM usage
As you have observed, by following the tips outlined; it has managed to reduce the RAM usage after startup from usual 1GB-1.5GB to just around 500MB (ready boost feature not yet enabled). Now you have more RAM allotted for your audio recording tasks (around 1.5GB). Not only contributing to speed, but your netbook will now boot and shutdown very fast unlike before.
Content last updated on August 14, 2012