Hardware specs for install

[Aging Technogeek]

First of all, what version of Mint are you using? Also, can you be a little more specific in describing your problem? Is Firefox slow loading or running or both? And are other apps slow as well?

Your processor and hard drive look adequate and 739 MB of ram would seem to be enough for most applications.

[Aging Technogeek]

A couple more questions to more completely define your system.

1. Do you have a graphics card installed and if so, does it share system ram or have dedicated ram?

2. You seem to be using system monitor to get CPU usage data. Can you look at memory usage ,specifically swap, and see if you have a high rate of swap usage? This would indicate a memory shortage and, since swap requires a read/write to hard drive it slows your system down.

A few things you can try right away.

1.Disable visual effects- go to Preferences=>Appearance=>Visual Effects and check "None".

2. Go to Preferences=>Sessions and remove checks on all items you don't need running in the background (bluetooth, mintUpdate, accessability options, etc.). Then go to Administration->Services and do the same( be careful in services that you do not disable anything necessary for proper operation. If in doubt, don't disable it.)

This will not reduce ram and CPU usage by much but any reduction could help.

[bennachie]

It sounds as if the delays might indeed be associated with memory swapping because you have several applications open. While your machine specifications are modest, they should be sufficient for decent performance. Extra memory is pretty cheap, usually very easy to install, and almost invariably improves matters. Your Celeron can probably handle up to 2GB in two slots.

BTW, what size of swap partition do you have? The common wisdom seems to be that around 1.5 times the installed RAM is appropriate.

[Aging Technogeek]

You said your computer is a laptop. Most newer laptops use some type of CPU clock frequency scaling to limit power usage. In other words, your 2.8 Ghz Celeron may normally run at 800 Mhz or even 600 Mhz and only speed up when heavily loaded.

You can easily check this, and even reset the clock frequency, by right clicking on the bottom panel and selecting "Add to Panel". Scroll down the list of applets until you come to "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor" Click on it to highlight it and click "Add". This will let you monitor CPU clock frequency and, by clicking on the icon, you will get a menu with several operating modes and a list of all available clock frequencies.

Try it and see if it helps.

[Aging Technogeek]

If you suspect Java script on websites is the cause of your problem, try adding "NoScript" to your Firefox add-ons. It blocks Java script from sites you don't list as allowed to run it.