How to improve speed of Android Studio on a legacy computer

Android Studio is one of the best IDEs for Android apps development, but with legacy computers, it is very slow. To run it on a Dell Vostro 3546, here's what I had to do. Upgrade hardware Minimum RAM required is 8 gb. The laptop came with 4 gb DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM which was slow, … Continue reading How to improve speed of Android Studio on a legacy computer →

How to install Linux Mint on Crucial MX500 SATA SSD drive on Dell Vostro 3546 laptop after BIOS upgrade

The humble Dell Vostro 3546 is an old laptop from 2014, which came with an Intel 4th Generation 4210U processor, 1 TB SATA 5400 rpm hard disk and 4 GB DDR3 (low voltage) 1.35V RAM. It worked fine till now even when it ran Linux Mint 20.3 with Blender 3D. However, everytime an Android app … Continue reading How to install Linux Mint on Crucial MX500 SATA SSD drive on Dell Vostro 3546 laptop after BIOS upgrade →

Dell Support Experience to order and replace laptop battery

This is based on the experience of one of my family with Dell Support whose Dell Inspiron uses a 3 cell 4.1V 3500 mAH Li-ion battery - part number FW8KR11. This was confirmed in Linux using dmidecode. Open a terminal window and enter the command below.$ sudo dmidecode <enter>Portable BatteryLocation: Sys. Battery BayManufacturer: BYDManufacture Date: … Continue reading Dell Support Experience to order and replace laptop battery →

Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop too slow with Windows 11. Upgrade to M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

After upgrading the Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop to Windows 11, the big problem is the speed of the laptop. It deteriorates to the extent that it takes almost 5 minutes to boot. Each click on the desktop to open an app takes almost 30 seconds. With this performance, the laptop is virtually useless. The laptop … Continue reading Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop too slow with Windows 11. Upgrade to M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD →

Experience with upgrade of RAM memory on Dell Inspiron 5580 and Dell Inspiron 5570 laptops

If you are one of those who run Virtual Box and use any other OS in it, then the base memory of the Dell Inspiron 5580 of 8 gb DDR4 RAM and an NVME PCIe SSD will still not give near good performance of Windows or the other OS in Virtual Box. The simplest solution … Continue reading Experience with upgrade of RAM memory on Dell Inspiron 5580 and Dell Inspiron 5570 laptops →

How to report battery or other issue to Dell using SupportAssist Diagnostics if you use Linux

Dell has an application SupportAssist on the laptops it sells. To them, this is their bible about the information on your laptop. Any issue reported to Dell, ends up with technical support staff who ask to run SupportAssist first thing. On a Linux machine, SupportAssist will not work, even in a virtual machine. To overcome … Continue reading How to report battery or other issue to Dell using SupportAssist Diagnostics if you use Linux →

How to fix tinny sound from Dell Inspiron 5000 series laptop speakers in Linux Mint 20 or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Linux Mint 20, Xubuntu or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS runs well on the Dell laptop. But, the recent upgrade to Linux Mint 20 or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS caused an issue of tinny sound from the the speakers. After trying several changes, I tried this below, and at least, using the pulseaudio equalizer, managed to make the … Continue reading How to fix tinny sound from Dell Inspiron 5000 series laptop speakers in Linux Mint 20 or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS →

Select and set up a Crucial M2.2280 NVMe PCIe SSD

Android Studio works quite slow with a normal SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD), on a computer. To overcome this, there are a few solutions, including waiting for the good folks at Google to release another efficient version, or if you are seriously into Android development, then you can augment the hardware of your computer by … Continue reading Select and set up a Crucial M2.2280 NVMe PCIe SSD →