Vista - More Ram?

My wife's laptop, a Dell Inspiron 6400, running vista home basic has become noticeably slower over the past two years.I have run the c-cleaner I found here, done a disk defrag and cleanup but it isn't much better.It has an Intel celeron m cpu 520 @1.6 GHZ, with only I GB Ram. Is it worth buying more memory for it ? Although she doesn't play games, or run lots of applications it is much slower than my laptop, enough to annoy me when I use it!
Thanks,
Gads

Tough call. Extra Ram would make a difference, but it most likely wouldn't be a stellar improvement.

In addition to what you have done, have you tried disabling any un-necessary apps from Starting Up when Windows loads?

How many running process does task manager show?

Does it have an active anti-virus (resident scanner) running?


(But the cheapest and quickest way to solve the speed issue would be to stop using her laptop )

Honestly, I consider 2GB of ram to be minimum to run Vista properly.

At least 1 GB of additional RAM should help a lot

2GB of RAM can only help, even for Vista Basic. But there are probably other causes for fthe slowdown. Too much stuff installed, unnecessary startups (disable all for a test - none are really needed), lots of temporary files, etc.. You can go for a good cleanup or a reinstall which would be my choice. Here is a link to a Dell site that explains it ( Dell - Support ).

Thanks for the help everyone.I've ordered a 1GB Memory module as they were surprisingly cheap, and it can only help. You might have gathered I don't really know much about computers, but I've found task manager and it shows there are 64 processes (I only counted 27 on the list though! ?), and the physical memory is 720 MB, which I suppose means there isn't much left to play with ? How do I find which applications start up when windows loads? I've been there before but I just can't remember! There were loads of temporary files which I've deleted, and my wife seems to think it is a little faster, though it's hard to know with small differences.
Apologies again for my inadequacies,
Gads

There are many ways to control the startups. I found this program to be the easiest to work with ( BillP Studios - WinPatrol 2010 ). You can disable all programs for testing and then reenable the ones you really want (e.g. sidebar).
Some of you RAM is apparently used by the graphics driver. That's why you dont have the full GiG.
Click on "show processes for all users" in task manager. Then you see all.

please before you order any ram make sure they didnt make the current 1 gig of ram up with 2 x 512 sticks , you only have 2 slots in that laptop if you already have both slots full you'll have to take one stick out before you can add your new stick , leaving you with only 1.5 gig

I made that mistake with the wifes lappy i had to order another gig stick

Safest way is to scan your system here: ( RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, flash cards, SSD at Crucial.com ) Then you know what your options are.

Looks like I just made that mistake too! I tried to download the system scanner but it wouldn't run, so I went ahead and ordered.I just opened the memory bay to find 2x 512 MB sticks.Will it run with a 1GB and a 500 MB, or do they need to match? Seems a shame to only be getting half a gig extra if I do it that way, or I need to spend another twenty quid.Decisions, decisions.....
Didn't someone say the cheapest way was not to use my wife's laptop?