Netbooks aren’t known for being powerhouses. In fact, they’re kind of known for being the opposite: Affordable, portable, and generally underpowered when compared to larger machines. But there are a few things you can do to give netbooks a bit of a speed or performance boost. And Maximum PC has put together a nice little list.
Most of the items are pretty obvious: Upgrade the RAM, swap out the hard drive for a faster disk or solid state disk, or change the operating system. But Maximum PC puts together a nice series of benchmarks showing the impact each of these changes will have, as well as some basic guidance for performing some of the trickier upgrades like swapping out your hard drive.
If you’ve been thinking about tweaking your netbook but haven’t known what kind of RAM or storage media to get or need some help figuring out how to backup all of your files and settings, Maximum PC’s guide is worth a read.
Ugg, I wish they had a bigger set of test bed machines? But, that really shouldn’t matter since many netbooks are exactly the same specs. But, it would have been nice to see a comparison of a stock machine up against a machine were ALL the tweaks were done to see a price/power ratio.
It was funny to read some of the comments. I think some of the Maximum PC regulars are not ‘familiar’ with what netbooks are let alone what they can do. The ‘calculator’ comment had me on the floor laughing.