If you operate a PC and take it onto a network, security must be a major concern. In a world filled with Trojans, viruses, spyware, adware, Java hacks and assorted other malware derivatives, going to the wrong Web-site can be an eye-opening experience. To counteract these bad apples, the PC security industry has developed a cadre of tools to protect individual computers from all sorts of digital malefaction. But can all of this digital armor cause a slow computer?

Protection Comes With A Cost

In one word, yes. Anti-virus software, anti-malware software, and other kinds of malware protection can and do cause computers to slow down. If it makes you feel any better, malware can also cause your computer to slow down. Tolerating slow performance due to malware protection is a trade-off of sorts. Frankly, having to be a little patient with a slow computer is better than having your banking information stolen.

The more protection you layer onto your computer, the slower your performance may become. It’s important to realize that anti-malware software doesn’t always play nice with other anti-malware software. You need to be careful, if you’re adding multiple security products to your computer, to avoid software combinations that conflict with each other.

There are two important reasons for this. First, conflicts cause real problems. One anti-malware software package may prevent you from accessing your computer, if it believes that another anti-malware software is really malware. Anti-malware software may also compete with other installed packages for resources or control. The result of that is never good.

The second major problem with running too much anti-malware software is that you may not be any better protected by having two anti-malware packages than you would be by having just one. Two anti-malware packages can miss infections just as easily as one can. In this case, two heads aren’t always better than one.

The best approach to protecting your computer against malware and making sure your computer is not too slow as a result is to have one highly recommended anti-malware package on your computer. Keep your anti-malware package up-to-date, and regularly download and apply the updates. Do the same thing for your operating system, and for applications like Java, Shockwave and Flash.

If you suspect that your computer has been infected by a malware program, there are scanners you can download that will run without conflicting with your installed anti-virus protection. If you find something, clean it up and patch your system to prevent further infections. Don’t arbitrarily layer on additional protection. Doing so can cause your computer to slow down significantly as your anti-malware software applications square off against each other.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC, via Flickr

Has your PC lost some of the pep that was once in its step? PC slowdown is a normal thing that happens as your PC matures and becomes laden with too many programs and erroneous file paths. However, you do not have to live with it. Here are some ways you can quickly boost your PC speed without having to go out and purchase a newer computer…

Slow Start up

If your PC takes to long to start up, you might have too many programs trying to turn on, when you do. Turning on your PC can become akin to dealing rush hour traffic as all you messenger services, your virus protection, your picture downloading software and who knows what else rushes to start firing up their programming. The best way to deal with this is to limit the number of programs you have wanting to run on start up. Just click on the RUN tab and type in MSNCONFIG to get to your start up options. Now you can tick off whatever programs you think you might no need at start up. There is also an option to delay some programs so that they start a minute or two after start up. Also, if you happen to have the full version of Regcure, you can pick and choose which program you want to keep at Start Up and which ones you would like to save for later.

Defragging taking forever

While it is good that you are trying to Defrag your hard drive, lets face it, Window’s Defragging program is as slow a your Grandma on Sunday. There are a number of other alternative defragmentor programs out there including Defraggler and Auslogics. Give one these puppies a try to see if perhaps you can optimize you hard drive before its time for bed.

Adding and Removing

If you have ever tried to add and remove some programs with the add and remove program applet that can be found in your control panel, you know that this beast is a slow one indeed that is prone to freezing and ending abruptly. My suggestion is to us an alternative uninstalling program such as CCleaner or Myunistaller.

Programs that just won’t end

Ever notice that after you choose to end an unresponsive program, that does not seem to want to go away right away. Well, you can change this by going to your Regedit program and looking up HKEY_local_machine\system\currentcontrolset\control and change the setting for “the wait to kill” to 1000. This should help zap out those unresponsive programs

The future is now

This past year, there has been a lot of talk about cloud computing and how it is going to change the entire world of personal computers. There has been speculation that Apple and Google are going to join forces to create a cloud network, and Windows and IBM have both announced plans to move into the cloud industry. Even the internet retail giant, Amazon, has been rumored to be planning to utilize its vast database warehouses to set up a cloud network.  Advocates of the idea claim that cloud computing will revolutionize the industry, eliminating viruses and computer crashes as well as the need for bulky hard drives and optical drives. They also tout the new cloud computers as being green since they use less power than a typical computer and last twice as long since they lack moving parts and their software is continuously upgraded.

What is the cloud?

The idea of cloud computing focuses around keeping all applications and data storage online in massive warehouses and making the computer merely a tool in which to access this information cloud via the broadband Internet. the cloud computer is essentially just a processor along with a screen,  keyboard and  mouse that is connected to a high speed Internet connection. Applications that you want to utilize are downloaded from a central database and data that you want to save is stored online in your personal storage space.

The advantages

One of the main advantages of cloud computing is that it the applications that you use are continuously updated, allowing you to get the latest version every time you use it. Having the operating system that works behind a powerful supercomputer with a ton of redundancy also ensures that the system is safe from viruses and software crashes. Since your computer is essentially just a processor and a Internet connections, there is really no worrying about corrupted registry problems, fragmented hard drives, or busted optical drives. Cloud computing will also allow the freedom of data access wherever there happens to be a high speed Internet connection. A cloud computer will be small and easy to take with you, and access to your personal cloud network will be as simple as typing in your user name and password.

The problems

While it would be nice to have a computer that always boots up in twenty seconds, never gets viruses and uses less power than a light bulb; it may be a hard sell for many people to let all of their personal computer data to be stored in some massive database somewhere.  If something does happen to the host server, all of this data could be lost or compromised and businesses who deal in sensitive information would be hard pressed to let anything go out past their firewalls. Also, even though the little cloud computers might be able to run on a watch battery, the mega super computers that actually run the show are the size of football fields and have cooling towers that are four story buildings.

Another problem are the applications. While these documents may be free to download, there has to be some way that you are paying for them and that way is through advertising. While embedded text might be less intrusive, do not be surprised if in the future, you are forced to watch a car commercial before you are allowed to access your term paper that you stored online. Another problem is the need for broadband access. If you do not have it, getting your cloud computer up and running will be an impossible task.

Not for everyone

While these new Net computers might find a niche in this newly wired world of ours, I have my doubts that everyone will take a shine to them.  Perhaps the younger generations will be attracted to them and their low cost (around 200 bucks)  might make them appealing in this economy of ours, but I think many people are going to have issues with trusting all their data in the hands of a few.

There is probably nothing more annoying than a pc that takes longer than a geriatric cow poke to boot up. Waiting for your PC to go through the motions can be especially annoying if you just have one little task to do, like check your e-mail and you need to wait ten to twenty minutes in order to get it done.  Let us take a look as to why the start up process is so slow and what we can to about it.

The icon army

If you take a quick look to at the bottom right panel of your screen and see a giant army of icons assembled, indicating that you have over a dozen processes running at once, this is probably why your computer takes all day long just to boot up. A lot of the processes that you choose to download, such as messenger applications like Yahoo and MSN  will automatically embed themselves into your startup tray unless you are tech savvy enough to keep them from doing so. Having all these applications open upon start up is akin to trying to speed to work during rush hour traffic. Your computer’s processing power and memory becomes bogged down as all these processes vie for attention.

Boot out to boot up

In order to get your PC’s boot up time back to something reasonablelike a minute or two, you might want to get rid of a few unnecessary processes in your start up tray. There are several ways that you can do this.

If you are feeling like a pro you can click on the Start menu, go to Run and then type in: msconfig.exe. This will take you to Window’s system configuration menu. Now click on the Startup tab and check out all the programs that began running when you turn your computer on. Getting rid of the ones that you do not need can be a little tricky and if you have any  doubt about a program, leave it alone until you know some more about it. There are lists availble on the Internet that will let you know what processes are absolutely necessary, and which one are not.

A slightly easier way to do it

If you do not feel like going through lists of processes and are afraid of playing doctor with your computer, I did find a slighlty easier way to get rid of some start up processes and make my computer faster. RegCure, the registry fixer, actually has an option that lets you decide which uneccesary programs you want to remove from start up, taking all the guess work out of what to get rid of.

You want a fast computer? Sure, we all want that. But, did you know that there are three easy steps that you can take in order to achieve this?  Follow these three little rules an you will have your PC  back up and burning through RAM in no time flat.

Step 1: Cleaning out your closet

If you do a lot of stuff on your computer, it is important to set aside time once a month in order to take stock, assess, roll up your sleeves, and get some cleaning done. If your hard drive is cluttered with documents, pictures, videos and mp3 files, you might want to burn what you do not really need to a disk and then erase them from your hard drive. Also check out your control panel and see if you have any programs that you are not using and remove them.  After this, you then want to go over to the tools menu of your start menu’s accessory tab and  click on “disk cleanup”. This will remove any garbage that has been sitting around as well as give you the option to remove all the temporary files  that you computer has downloaded from the internet.

After cleaning out your closet so to speak, it is now time to put everything else in those handy space saver vacuum bags that you see on television. Metaphorically speaking, the “defrag” option in your tools menu performs the role of space saver quite adequately. It will compress all your files into efficient little packages so that your computer can find them faster.

Step 2: Your Registry

While some people might snort at the idea that your registry can slog your computer down, I can attest that it really does, especially  if you are the type of person who likes to try out different programs and then try to remove them once you get sick of them. A computer’s registry can become bloated because of missing links,  wrong file paths, and corrupted registry keys.  I recommend that you try a free scan from RegCure and check out how many errors your registry does contain.  Do not be surprised if the number is in the high  hundreds.  If this is so, then I recommend downloading the full version and running a registry checkup on a monthly basis to ensure that your pc is in tip top shape.

Step 3: Spyware and virus alert

Getting viruses is probably the most annoying aspect of the cruising down the information highway. I especially hate those viruses that pop up and keep telling you that you have a virus, even though they are ones that are really infecting your computer. Once you get one of these guys into your system, it is almost impossible to get rid of them with anything short of reformatting your whole drive and starting over.  A good antiviral program is essential to keep these guys at bay and your computer running at full speed.  After trying all of the big ones, I recommend using AVG antivirus, which seems to provide the best service for the money.

Spyware is another insidious problem that can wreak havoc on your system as well as expose your personal information to third parties. Antispyware is easy to obtain online, with free dwonloads performing just as well as the stuff you might pay for. If you do get a free down load however, be sure to regularly update it. I really liked how the product Spybot  worked at keeping these nosy little bugs from running around in my PC.  Also, it is important to note, that Virus protection, and spyware removal programs are not the same thing. Be sure to get both products in order to keep your pc safe.