Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Finally took the plunge and picked up a netbook. It's an HP 210, running on an Atom N450. It's 1gb RAM. It'll stay that way for a while. I might get the 2gb chip eventually, but definitely not before my first big trip with it.

I'm looking to use it almost exclusively while traveling for web surfing and image storage. I'd really like to run Lightroom on it.

Any computer wizard tips for how best set it up for this purpose?

It comes with Win7, but I have access to XP if that's better. Is it better to go with an older LR version?

Any other suggestions / experiences with netbook are welcome. I've looked through the couple of threads from last year and wonder if the folks that were getting netbooks have any tips to share.

HP is notorious for 'bloatware'. All the preloaded HP software eats up most of your resources, especially with only 1 GB of ram. I have the HP 311 and the first thing I did was remove all the programs that start with HP in the Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. There is no need to downgrade to XP. Win 7 is far more stable and secure then XP and performance is extremely similiar.

I picked up a Gateway netbook with the same Atom N450 and 7Starter. I upgraded it to 2 GB by taking the 2GB out of my Macbook and putting the 1GB stick into that. I can't really tell the difference on the Macbook at 3GB but the netbook seems a little faster with 2.

First thing I did was remove anything I didn't recognize in the Add/Remove Program panel making sure I didn't touch certain software (i.e. the camera software, the trackpad stuff, etc) Surprisingly it didn't come with a lot.

Next thing I did was create a Truecrypt mounted folder as I plan on taking this thing oversea's in the next few weeks and if I lose it I don't want anyone to have access to the personal stuff I'm keeping on it (scans of my family passports and the photo's I download onto it). A little overkill but you never know.

Then I installed Firefox and Chrome with the exif extensions, Picassa for downloading photo's from my D700 (weee, it's new to me and thanks Edward) on it and most importantly the GNU version of Media Player Classic Homecinema so the kids can watch movies on the plane. I tried VLC but it seemed to stutter on some of the files.

That pretty much sums it up. I don't believe it really has a lot of other uses besides surfing (Firefox/Chrome after hitting F11 for full screen mode) and copying photo's onto it, I'm not sure I'd try editing those photo's on a 10" screen

On my HP netbook, I promptly removed any windows crap and installed ubuntu netbook remix. Doesn't answer any of your questions but I really like this machine now. No hardware upgrade has been performed.

Lightroom is pretty disk/processor intensive, it will run sluggishly on a netbook. Netbooks are meant for apps that aren't too processor intensive, accessing the web, and a good alternative for offloading photos. You're better off using something else if you want to quickly view photos like BreezeBrowser.

Thanks for input and the tips on removing all the HP junk. Will do that today.

Chrome is (of course) the first thing on the list once I start loading it up with software.

After finally getting to play with it yesterday, I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised with it. After the performance horror stories on the web, I had pretty low expectations, but after I copied about 10 gigs worth of raw files and videos onto it and just browsed through them, I found the speed more than acceptable for my travel purposes. 720p videos from my D90 play without issue. Of course I still have to see what it'll be like with actual software, but so far I'm happy. The real test will come when I take it on the road for 3 weeks in July.

I'd also like to formally thank Apple for releasing the iPad - it convinced me to buy a Netbook

I've been pleasantly surprised at it's ability to play 720P media in Media Player Classic Homecinema. It stuttered in VLC and the default Windows Media player. I understand MPCH isn't playing every frame but it's smooth enough that you don't notice the jumps on the smaller screen.

Mines ready to go for my two week trip to Portugal in a couple of weeks. What did you settle on for viewing the photo's?

I haven't settled yet. Just got it yesterday, so just viewed photos in windows to check out access speed for 10mb raws.

I still intend to TRY Lightroom to see how sluggish it is. If it's unbearable, I'll start going with the suggestions from this forum and various free programs. I don't entirely HATE the basic Nikon viewer that came with the camera, so that's an option too.

To put things into perspective, I am running on Intel Celeron 1.73ghz Toshiba laptop with 2gb ram (1.75 actually with onboard video) and Lightroom 3 + Photoshop Cs5

It does seem sluggish at times, but not always. I have installed win 7 and I am quite happy with it, that being said, my system is heavily controlled and clean, and never crashes if I don't put it under extreme strain. And I do extreme processing in Lightroom (use all available tools including multiple brush adjustments and graduated tool at the same time)

Are there any particularly good utilities for keeping the system clean? This is my first machine with Win7 (my desktop is a few years old and still runs xp).

Antivirus software, brains and google

CCleaner, Avast!, Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, Spybot are the programs I use to keep my computer safe and running free of problems.

Many programs that you install will run on startup. You can free up some ram by turning them off.

- run > msconfig > startup > uncheck unnecessary programs

Only run Avast! on startup, others you can run every other week or so to keep your system in good shape.

personally, on all my machines I use at home, malware bytes, do a scan once a month, and no issues. I don't have any active scanners at all.

Malwarebytes ftw for sure

Many media players and software will have automatic updates or will run on startup. iTunes, RealPlayer, Quicktime, DivX... just to name a few. Be sure to turn them off. It'll speed up your system.

Or just don't use them. I haven't tried a file that hasn't worked on Media Player Classic Homecinema (haven't tried embedded stuff in a browser yet but most of that runs using Flash) and I'm pretty sure it doesn't call home. As well, after uninstalling the Norton crap that came with my netbook, I installed Microsoft Security Essentials which usually gets great rating for malware detection and has a fairly small footprint. Add flashblocker to whichever browser you use and then be semi-smart about the sites you visit and you should be pretty much covered.

In terms of anti-virus software i would recommending removing whatever is installed and use AVG Free version. It uses very little resources.

+1

Avast! or AVG??

Avast! protects against infected flash drives as well. It's been the best free antivirus software I've used.. better than Bitdefender, Norton, Avira..

No matter which antivirus you choose, you gotta have Spybot, Malwarebytes, and CCleaner along with it.

AVG for me!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISIBCLS9MuM .
2 G is the max it can take. Good news is that you can upgrade to 2 G readily.
Other forum members gave you good advice


Daniel

+1

I've installed Clamwin
http://www.clamwin.com/

Clam is open source and used to be purely linux based it is very efficient and very unobtrusive. Really like it.

Edit....

Just realized there is no realtime on access scanning....

There is this however....

http://sourceforge.net/projects/clamrt/

Will test this too let you guys know....

I've running 7 since it was released on two machines and I haven't noticed any performance issues over time. A lot more housekeeping was needed in XP and Vista in order to keep them running smoothly. Check for applications running automatically in task manager (Java and adobe updaters are two that come to mind).

As for antivirus I have been a loyal AVG and spybot user for a few years, but after reading a number of reviews I replaced both with Microsoft Security Essentials. One PC magazine last month put all the programs head to head and only two programs passed their test of bombarding them with viruses, spyware and malware. Norton and MSE. But MSE is free.

+1 ... I've been using it for 6 yrs now on all my home built machines (4 of them) and 3 laptops and have only ever had one issue of a trojon sneaking through.

I also picked up a netbook just few months ago. lenovo s10.
i use xp on it with i don't use LR on it because its too slow, i just use irfanview and internet, and ftp to transfer files.
I have 2gb ram and runs pretty smoothly.
I've always used NOD32 as my antivirus and never had a problem before. I find it takes less resourses maybe, because nortan and all the other ones were sluggish when i was using them.

I have Avast Pro. But I still got hit a week ago. Whatever it was took over Avast. I called their support and they did a fantastic job of resolving the issue. Avast is good and has served me well for around 3 years, but that incident got be nervous. But the support gave me confidence again.