10 Ways to Boost Netbook Performance

Over the past 12 months, Netbook sales has rocketed in the market, as more users are now looking out for cheaper alternatives to laptops to supplement their computing requirements. According to market research, about 20% of the 30 million laptops shipped worldwide were netbooks during the first quarter of 2009, as compared to just over 3% during the same period last year. Without the netbooks, the laptop market would have plummeted by 19%, said John Jacobs, director of notebook market research at Display Search.

Compared to laptops, netbooks still use the slower Intel Atom processors in their system, and they do not come with discrete graphics cards or optical drives. However, that does not mean you could not boost the performance of your netbook to the level of that of your laptops. Below are some fixes that you could easily do to increase performance.

(10 Ways to Boost Netbook Performance, click here...)

10 Ways to Boost Netbook Performance

1. Use Windows XP - Compared to Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP is a less resource-intensive, therefore provides a smoother performance when running on the slower Intel Atom processor.
2. Maximise Memory - Upgrade the netbook to the maximum memory size of 2GB. Applications today, typically are rather resource-hungry, so a 2GB memory allows users a much better experience.
3. Enlarge Battery Capacity - Beware, retailers are able to sell you netbooks at a cheap price, because they come with standard 3-cell batteries that give you only a couple of hours of computing. If you want to maximise your computing experience, e.g. up to 10.5 hours in Asus Eee PC, you have to ensure that you pay for the six-cell or eight-cell battery pack. This is definitely a must thing for all who purchases netbooks.
4. Buy External DVD Drive - Netbooks do not come with an optical drive. Fear not, always get an external optical drive, preferably DVD or even Blu-ray, to fit your requirement.
5. Switch to Solid-State Drive - Solid-State Drive (SSD) is flash-based drives, only that they do not lose the memory upon shutting down of the PC. Because it does not involve the traditional physical mechanism of moving parts, SSD runs a lot faster! There are already a couple of netbooks offering SSD as part of the package, but the prices are still pretty hefty. However, prices for SSD are expected to decrease over the next few months.
6. Enable Cache - To improve performance, enable the disk write cache of the hard disk drive. If you are running Microsoft Windows operating system, do this: inside Control Panel, click on System. Then click on Hardware tab and subsequently Device Manager. Click on the disk drives and right-click on the hard disk drive's name. Choose Properties, click on Policies and then tick "enable write caching on the disk". Normally, this should already been enabled. For Linux users, depending on the distribution that you used, you may have to workaround differently. One of the command is "hdparm", which you can run to configure the write cache on disk drives.
7. Clean Start-up Programs - Too many start-up programs will simply slow down your boot up. In that case, configure the start up programs to remove some unwanted applications that you felt unnecessary to run during the start-up process. To do so, go to Start, Run, and type "msconfig". That will bring you to a list of programs, which you can enable or disable applications during start-ups.
8. Boost Graphics Performance - One recommendation that I received was to use GMABooster, a software that improves graphics performances of Intel's Integrated graphics chipsets up to 2.5 times. I have not given this method a try, but it's probably better than nothing.
9. Use a mouse - Trackpads are mostly included in netbooks today,  but nothing beats that traditional mouse. Invest on one, and probably a good one.
10. Try Asus N10Jc - Okay, this is probably not a "way" to boost netbook performance, but rather suggesting a Netbook recommendation. Comparing to other netbooks, the difference in this Asus N10Jc system is that it comes with a dedicated 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card. Asus might have refused to call this a netbook, but it runs on Intel Atom processor and it's the only netbook around that breaks that 1,000 mark for 3DMark 06 test. The cost is about US$616, and it only has a maximum of 1GB memory.

Who says Netbooks cannot be tweaked to improve performance. Here you go and enjoy the best of the Netbooks.