I'm wondere, what recommendations are being made. Insanity! There is only one correct answer - you may do what ever you want, but this computer will never work faster! It isn't possible. Keep your money for a new computer and do not listen to all the recommended wisdom! (better is "wisdom").
Well I use Windows 7, so its irrelevant I believe Yes @kaljukass , you are absolutely right ! I'll have to go with an SSD instead ! Thanks for the recommendations and suggestions : )
I don't think a RAM upgrade would resolve your performance issue. Could you describe the effects a bit more accurate, please? First and foremost does it swap to HDD while browsing? HDD activity/slowdown due to? On the PC from where I am just posting there runs a 32 bit w7 OS which addresses 3.11GB out from 8GB. There is no browsing issue, because the CPU is not old (I5-6500) and the RAM type is not old. (I am running this with 32 bit only because it's a scientific PC for special needs). Your PC has issues because of an old CPU and chipset and DDR type 2. FF needs resources. You can try to tweak FF You can try to use another browser. But best would be to try a live boot of a Linux distro that has FF included. No installation, just one try to have a look if FF gets snappier. I'd suggest a distro which uses less resources per se. I'd suggest Xubuntu first. It's relatively lightweight and comes with the XFCE destktop (comes with some comfort already) . The most lightweight would be Lubuntu, though. Get the ISO and just live boot it. NO need to install. Test FF there if it's snappier. I would not upgrade DDR2 RAM there, rather a SSD. A SSD you can simply use at a new PC as well, whereas DDR2 not. It wouldn't be a good buy....
Yeah I'd go for an SSD too. Typical laptop mechanical hard drives spin at 5400 rpm. A desktop Hard drive spins at 7200 rpm. That difference in rotation speed makes a big difference in performance. Like Yen said: Try the 'nix distro he recommended. It won't cost you anything, and if you like it better than Windows, you could switch.
A SSD (system) will give you a much better overall performance since any I/O on disk will be much faster. Your MOBO has the SATA-II standard already. Should not be of a huge bottleneck and as said it's for future needs (new PC). Another tip: windows 7 32 bit uses less resources than 64 bit OS. Being just at the 4GiB boundary I'd say 32 bit would be more efficient on your old rig.
I'm going to "qualify" this statement, so that there is no misunderstanding. No, an SSD does not speed up your CPU. But, with just about every WIndows OS, the swap file is the I/O bottleneck. If you have less RAM, you'll be using a section of the hard drive as virtual memory. An SSD will speed that up, giving the illusion of higher performance. Yeah you beat me to the punch on that one. I can't see how putting a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit CPU could speed things up. I'm sure that someone has tried it, but I'm wondering what the performance would be like. Also, check your version of FireFox. Older versions of FF have been shown to have a memory leak, and it's a little greedy with regards to RAM usage.