I have recently installed Adobe Lightroom on my computer. It is a program for downloading, classifying and editing photos. It’s great. Downside is, whenever I’m running it, my computer slows to a snail pace. Every action takes forever. Obviously this program is beyond its capabilities.

I really don’t want to buy a new computer because that is a major pain in the arse, akin to moving homes. Are there any upgrades I can make to my computer, e.g. RAM, ROM, Motherboard, Processor? (Those terms have as much meaning to me as Smurf, Roodle, Crump and Merkin.)

Any info appreciated.

Here’s a tip: don’t go Googling “merkin”.

Divine Angel said:

Here’s a tip: don’t go Googling “merkin”.

I thought it might be a baby meerkat.

pesce.del.giorno said:

I have recently installed Adobe Lightroom on my computer. It is a program for downloading, classifying and editing photos. It’s great. Downside is, whenever I’m running it, my computer slows to a snail pace. Every action takes forever. Obviously this program is beyond its capabilities.

I really don’t want to buy a new computer because that is a major pain in the arse, akin to moving homes. Are there any upgrades I can make to my computer, e.g. RAM, ROM, Motherboard, Processor? (Those terms have as much meaning to me as Smurf, Roodle, Crump and Merkin.)

Any info appreciated.

If you buy some new Smurf, Roodie, a little bit of Crump and Merkin, and put it in a new Rewot, and transfer the data from your old Retupmoc you will have much better performance.

Or to put it in plain English, upgrades aren’t worth the money or effort, buy a new computer.

How old’s your machine, pesce? Personally I would regard trying to upgrade a slow old computer as a much bigger PITA than just buying a new one. You can back up what you want to save from the old one on an external hard drive, and quickly pour it all into the new machine.

does it have an adjustment for how much system resources it uses? Like you may be able to adjust it in the program so it runs lghtly on resources. Some crack OS person here may even be able to give instructions regards how to make the OS do it, or do it slower.

Put more ram in.

pesce.del.giorno said:

I have recently installed Adobe Lightroom on my computer. It is a program for downloading, classifying and editing photos. It’s great. Downside is, whenever I’m running it, my computer slows to a snail pace. Every action takes forever. Obviously this program is beyond its capabilities.

If Lightroom is very hungry for memory it might be forcing your computer to use virtual memory, i.e, it simulates having extra RAM using your hard drive. This can slow things down enormously, as HD speed is much slower than RAM. Does your HD light go crazy while you’re using Lightroom?

If this is the case, you may be able to speed things up by adding extra RAM to your computer, but if it’s an old (32 bit) computer the motherboard may already have as much RAM as it can handle.

Traditionally, computers have a single Central Processing Unit (CPU), so they can only do one thing at a time; they multi-task by quickly switching between the different tasks. Modern computers generally have multi-core CPUs, which means they can run 2 or more processes simultaneously. I suspect that Lightroom would run more smoothly on such a system.

You may be able to improve the responsiveness of your system by reducing the priority of the Lightroom process(es), so that it doesn’t hog so much CPU time. This will slow Lightroom down, but allow other processes to run faster.

This page shows you how to change the priority of a running process; it’s also possible to set process priority when you start it. See here for details.

pesce.del.giorno said:

I have recently installed Adobe Lightroom on my computer. It is a program for downloading, classifying and editing photos. It’s great. Downside is, whenever I’m running it, my computer slows to a snail pace. Every action takes forever. Obviously this program is beyond its capabilities.

I really don’t want to buy a new computer because that is a major pain in the arse, akin to moving homes. Are there any upgrades I can make to my computer, e.g. RAM, ROM, Motherboard, Processor? (Those terms have as much meaning to me as Smurf, Roodle, Crump and Merkin.)

Any info appreciated.

The best upgrade that you can do is to install a Solid State Drive (SSD). Make the SSD the main system drive and keep your old HDD for storage. A SSD will give your old computer a new lease of life. You wont believe the difference it will make to your old computer.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/HDD_vs_SSD

fsm said:

The best upgrade that you can do is to install a Solid State Drive (SSD). Make the SSD the main system drive and keep your old HDD for storage. A SSD will give your old computer a new lease of life. You wont believe the difference it will make to your old computer.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/HDD_vs_SSD

IWFSM

I’m running SSDs in both the main PC and my lappy and (with enough RAM and good OS), they literally run faster than I can use them.