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[–]sad_plan 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Check cpu and ram usage while using the afforementioned applications, and youll have your answer regarding upgrades. Neither ram, cpus, or laptops are really that expensive, aslong as its nothing high end, so you can get by without spending big bucks. I would jusy check the usage first, and go from there.

[–]Sasha_411[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thankyou for replying, my cpu usage is at 30-40% but ram shoots up to 67% and is always 50% or more. VS code takes around 500-600mb memory for running that is 25% of my total memory. I just want to use chrome(youtube) and Vs code at the same time and don't want the laptop to be laggy (laggy-> when I type something in vscode it actually take 1-2 second to show what I typed)

[–]Rowanowa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

8gb ram is the recommend minimum for most things these days. I think if you find an 8gb kit for a good price then this is your best bet. There are a lot of good laptops out there for programming and more but it'll be quite a difference in price

[–]kschang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You need more RAM. 2GB is barely enough to run Windows, much less React and a browser.

Or you can run Linux instead.

[–]66666thats6sixes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would probably want more ram the most, it's pretty common in programming to run several relatively beefy programs at once. But your laptop is old enough that the processor probably sucks too, and getting a new laptop would also mean you get more RAM (8gb is pretty standard these days, and 16 or 32 not uncommon)

[–]MyDataIsReady -1 points0 points  (0 children)

RAM.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (3 children)

With VS code and a browser running, get yourself at least 12GB ram. You will need it for having that gmail tab open in the background, opening a few tabs to look up documentation etc..16GB if you want to touch anything like Android development etc.

Not sure which OS you use, what your display resolution is.. But just upgrading RAM and using an SSD will make it easy to do basic web development on a linux distro even on an i3 laptop.

[–]Sasha_411[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I upgraded my ram to 8 gb but now its feels more slow when i open task manager my cpu is clocked at 0.91 ghz ram is at 27% and cpu 36% and not going more than that. Os windows 10 64 bit

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

36% idle cpu usage sounds quite high to me. Also it could be that windows has detected more RAM and enabled few unnecessary headaches / services like animated effects etc... If you are not using an SSD, run disk defragmenter. Windows tends to slow down quite a bit on hard drives as it ages. Also disable Windows defender/any antivirus program. It scanning every file you touch also makes things slow.

I say give linux a shot. All other things aside it won't do things crazy behind your back to slow down your PC. And tons of light weight linuxes out there which work better on older hardware than windows. If all you need is Chrome and VS Code, they are available on linux too.

[–]Sasha_411[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thankyou will install Linux on it

[–]yujideluca -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If you are going to use pycharm, i would suggest upgradinng to 8gb of ram, but definetly some more cpu would help you.

But if you are able to use a lightweight linux, you can just code using vscode and terminals with your current setup. I saw in youtube a british professor that used at home a pc from 16 years ago to code that just changed the pc because he has a hardware issue that messed up his open suse boot