Hi all,
I work in an elementary school with no budget for new computers, but they are lucky enough to have a lab with about 30 old Dell Optiplex GX 270's (circa 2005) - you may have seen my question asking about the most economical way to replace them.
But...maybe we don't have to replace them - I've read the great makeuseof article about extending the life of an old machine by installing Ubuntu - the only trouble is, our DOE tech support group does not support this operating system - and I can see why, since I had a friend with a similar machine that was experiencing boot problems, and after many hours of troubleshooting, I was still unable to resolve the problem.
That said, one of our biggest problems is 'slowness' of the machines.
For some reason, these machines always run very slowly;
When reimaged, they run reasonably quickly for a while, but then after a few months of use - mostly internet use, they slow down to a crawl (for example, to open the browser can take 30 to 60 seconds, to open Windows explorer and select the "File Search" menu item can take the same, to simply open a new program via Sart...Programs...Assessories...Notepad can take the same, etc.)
It is a known fact that our Internet connection speeds are typically .5 to .8 M.
Can anyone give some suggestions on what might be slowing down these machines - or diagnostics I can run to help determine why these machines run so slowly after several months ?
Our IT group is quick to come and re-image, but I'd like to get to the root of the problem.