I have been using easyphp as my local dev machine for some time. I recently decided to jump tp PHP 5 and unfortunately easyphp only have a very buggy beta release of a php5 wamp installer at the moment. So I have downloaded XAMPP. The only problem with this is it is sooooooooo slooooooooow. I can click a link then go make a cuppa tea and come back and it is still loading. Anyone know why it would be so slow and also if there are any other WAMP installers available.
Is it XAMPP or WAMP? I have been using xampp on a desktop and laptop and get instant response - so I doubt if the issue is with xampp. What other programs and services are running? Have you checked resource utilization in task manager? Try with static pages - do they take same time to load, or do you notice such issues with database / dynamic pages? It could be any factor, and needs further investigation, however i doubt if xampp or wamp are the culprits here. No idea on desktop based servers, you may like to check out free web hosting with PHP5 and MySQL for a free account (Ad free) Cheers
I've used xampp, it is reliable, but agreeably it is really slow... php triad used to be good, but like everyone else, i'd now recomment WAMP as a testing server
Okay I have now changed to WAMP and it is a little quicker. When I am trying to load a page there a number of processes that are caning the processor. The 2 main ones are 2 httpd.exe processes that are taking over 2 3rds of the resources between them. In all fairness it is an old laptop im running it on with 1gig processor and 512mb ram. Maybe it is just the upgrade to PHP5 that is causing the slowdown. I don't really know the difference in min spec required for the 2 so it could be that.