Tweaking my Vista laptop

The year is going fast now. Just a week until Christmas. We have most all of our shopping done, but yet to do some other necessary things.

I have been working on my laptop today as well. I was tired of having the lag time in typing to what shows on the screen and am happily typing away now. I don’t know for certain what thing it was, but I turned Indexing off of my drives and subfolders. I cleaned out System Restore files, reduced it’s allowed size, then eventually just shut it off since I really haven’t had success with it in the past with any other machines, living supposedly dangerously by having it turned off, but that’s the thing about it. I need a responsive machine or else I’d rather have nothing. Having a system that lags, skips and such for what you are typing into a browser, or any other program, is just ridiculous.

My laptop is an HP TX2513cl (12.1″ Tablet notebook) I’d searched and searched for information for two issues, the lag time in typing & the HD light flashing constantly, and I don’t mean consistently, I mean staggered constantly. Oooooooooon,off,ONNNNNNNNNNNNN,ofOOOOONofOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNN, etc.

Now It’s flickering inconsistenly, acceptable for now. I have 116GB of free space now too. That’s more than half the partition free. I was close to having less than 1/3-1/4 free. I did uninstall some programs I didn’t want anymore, and dump temp files, the bulk of it was freed when I dumped everything but the last restore point in System Restore. I decided I was going to do tweaky things before deciding what files to burn to discs, & then when I free up more space I’ll get System Restore back on, maybe. I actually like searching with Indexing on, so that I’ll put back first, in reality.

I put up with that staggering lag thing in typing for so long. I guess I actually had it from early on. I didn’t make a memory about it precisely, just have it in the back of my mind as a consistent annoyance since early on. I got this computer when my latest baby was still small, so in my defense I will say I didn’t type a whole lot, thus wasn’t as bothered by it, as I am anymore since I now have a toddler (more time to write here and there.) I keep hesitating now, thinking “it’s coming” and then it doesn’t. It’s a horrible thing, that feeling, the acceptance of it is almost worse. Ugh.

I don’t want to see it again, but it would be nice to see what thing I did made it go away. I can say for sure that turning Indexing off didn’t do it. HD Light was as constant as ever once Indexing was off as well. So Indexing wasn’t the problem, most likely. I tend to want to blame System Restore, since I sure did with Win XP, was happy to re-install with my OEM disk any old time I had a problem that “System Restore” might have fixed. I can also say the trouble I’ve had with System Restore is absolutely insane & I just don’t like it.

I also installed Vista Battery Saver, which is freeware, a light program to aide laptop users in having better batter life. I”m typing unplugged right now. I have Aero on until 30% battery left, and don’t use the Vista Sidebar at all for many months. Battery is better with BOTH off. I am just testing it this way now, since I like the look of Aero.

Another thing I did was take out several things from starting up with the computer, they are easy enough to start IF I want them. Like ATI’s control center (rarely use it ever.) Windows Live Messaging, I’ll start it up if I want it later. New Side Note for MS One Note, I open One Note often enough and haven’t used the tray functionality of it anyhow. Just things like that. Not getting rid of them, but just not running them all the time.

Well, that’s enough for now. I can’t recall if I missed something, but I’ll write more another time about my tweaking adventures.