I just bought a tiny Lenovo laptop for two purpose only: writing on the train, and occasional web access. Grabbed it for $100 on a Black Friday sale (nearly half off). I want to run basically four programs only: Scrivener (writing app), Aeon (timeline app), Mailbird for email and Chrome as my browser. I don’t expect a speed demon but I do want to make it as speedy as possible.
It is a Lenovo 130s:
|● Processor: Intel® Celeron® N4000 (1.10GHz, up to 2.60GHz Burst Technology, 4MB Cache)|
|● Operating System: Windows 10 Home in S mode|
|● Display Type: 11.6” HD (1366 x 768) anti glare|
|● Memory: 2GB LPDDR4 2133MHz|
|● Hard Drive: 64GB eMMC|
I took Windows 10 out of S mode. There is a decent amount of bloatware that obviously I could jettison, but before I do that – what’s the best way to proceed?
I don’t think there’s much you can do. Those things aren’t really upgradeable. I’m looking at a YouTube video of the Ideapad 120S upgrade capability, and while there would be a space for a M.2 drive on the motherboard, there are no connections for it. There’s no way to add more RAM. The storage is EMMC, which is basically SD card. There is probably a slot for a MicroSD card that you can expand the storage.
I would try the Edge Chromium beta. MS might be getting better performance on Windows than Google. I’ve been on the Developer builds for months, and it’s a really good (bordering on great) browser. After all, it’s Chrome with a Microsoft layer instead of a Google one.
Other than that, don’t install anything but your absolute core programs. Don’t bother with 3rd party antivirus. Windows Defender is seriously all you need, and you really don’t have any overhead to spare, anyway. Maybe give Windows Mail a shot; it’s fairly lightweight.
A program that was recommended by a friend and made a hell of a difference on my potatoes over the years was Process Lasso.
In freeware mode, the program was really helping with user interface responsiveness. I eventually just sent them money for the Pro version which I didn’t have use for after I forgot to install it once on a Windows reinstall: I was wondering why I was having spinning wheels like it’s the Carnival on my desktop, until I installed it again! That app really made a big difference for my slow laptops.
I don’t know if it’s still relevant in Windows 10 though.
You can get a $128GB M.2 for $20 to $30 bucks. That would be a nice speed increase. The 2GB of RAM is anemic, but with the SSD, should get the job done for the minimal demands being asked of the laptop.
Yes, the battery life is great, along with the size (and price).
Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. I may try adding an M.2 SSD thanks to the video that @mono posted, as well as trying Process Lasso, Firefox or Edge and of course uninstalling any bloatware I find. Onward!
EDIT: I realize I don’t really understand how expanding storage will help with speed, particularly when so limited by RAM. Do I need to configure the SSD a certain way so that it is using the drive space for caching, or something like that?
From my understanding, since the memory is so low, it will often read from the disk to swap memory. Having a good SSD will speed this up. No special config needed
