Hej Rejzor! Got any tips on avast! config for minimal spec netbook?

[Vladimyr]

Your Acer netbook has featured in a number of your posts over the last couple of years. I'm just about to "take the plunge" on a minimum-spec Lenovo (at a ridiculously low price) and was wondering if you've got the time to provide any up-to-the-minute experience-based AIS 6 tweaks?

Atom 1.66 single core
W7 Starter
1GB RAM (or 2 for an extra $20)
1024 x 600
5400 RPM HDD

[DavidR]

I have an Acer Aspire One, 10.1" netbook and the first thing I would say is get 2GB of ram 1GB is not adequate I had ordered a 2GB stick before even receiving my netbook which I fitted myself.

If you can get 2GB fitted for $20 go for it, it cost me more than that just for the 2GB stick of DDR3 memory.

Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N550 1.5GHz dual core
Win7 Starter
2GB DDR3 memory
1024 x 600
250GB 5400 RPM HDD

Whilst I don't have AIS I have avast free 6.0.1203 and Outpost Firewall Pro 7.5.1 so as far as resources go I would imaging it would be similar. I have avast basically set to the defaults, no P2P or IM shields as I don't use those applications.

[RejZoR]

Aspire One from AOA series don't support 2GB of memory. Max you can install is 1,5GB. That's much i have. 512MB is integrated on the motherboard and you can replace the 512MB module with 1GB one.

Honestly, there isn't much that will drastically improve anything. Only thing that made a difference was first upgrade to 7200 RPM drive and now to SSD. Only these two things (along with RAM) made a larger difference.

You could use a fast SD card with Win7 ReadyBoost though. That should provide some boost.
You can also turn of file scanning on writing, but from my experience that didn't improve things all that much.

[Vladimyr]

Thanks very much DavidR and RejZor.
Based on your comments the 2GB RAM option is definitely on.

My performance expectations from this machine are not high. I've often said that netbooks are mostly a feeble CPU in a brightly colourd "long battery life" wrapper.
If I was after real speed from a netbook-sized machine I'd be going for an HP 11" with AMD Fusion E350... but at 3x the price!

[DavidR]

You're welcome.

[RejZoR]

Thanks very much DavidR and RejZor.
Based on your comments the 2GB RAM option is definitely on.

My performance expectations from this machine are not high. I've often said that netbooks are mostly a feeble CPU in a brightly colourd "long battery life" wrapper.
If I was after real speed from a netbook-sized machine I'd be going for an HP 11" with AMD Fusion E350... but at 3x the price!

Well you could for starters buy a SSD drive. I'm using Corsair Force 3 120GB in my netbook and its so snappy now. Boots fast, everything is super responsive. And best of all silent and shock resistant. Plus the battery lasts a bit longer. If you don't need loads of space a 64GB or even 32GB unit could do the trick. And they cost up to 100 EUR these days for mentioned capacities.
Its an extra cost but its totally worth it. Plus when i'll buy a new one i'll just take current SSD out and place it in new netbook.

[Vladimyr]

Well I got the netbook 2 weeks ago. It came with a 90-day trial of McAfee Antivirus Plus.
Initial signs were not good - IE9's suggested list of add-ons to disable had McAfee right at the top.
 
I kept telling myself "It can't be all that bad." - but I just got sick of waiting for.. everything, especially Thunderbird, which seemed to take forever to load at startup.
The final straw was when I looked for a way of excluding TBird exec from real-time scanning - and discovered that there wasn't one!

Exit McAfee, enter AIS 6.
TBird launches in 4-5 secs.
IE9's happy. Oh.. I'm happy too!