Speed Up Computer

Lots of users are trying to stretch an extra year or more out of their current desktop or laptop computers. I find that it’s actually easier to get better computer performance improvements from a desktop computer than it is from a laptop computer. The reason for this is simple. Most laptop computers were designed with slower processors, stricter memory limitations, limited graphics processing abilities, and lower-volume hard disks. They were designed to conserve battery power, so their processors and video cards are typically underpowered and overburdened.

Removing Toolbars Can Help Speed Up Your Computer

Some Web applications offer you the “opportunity” to install toolbars that enable you to access the application’s functions and features from your desktop. Be warned that these toolbars and taskbars, including the Microsoft Office Task Bar, slow the performance of your computer substantially. These mini-applications run in the background at all times draining away your computer’s memory and CPU resources.

Worse, some of these add-ons contain viruses and other types of malware that will create even worse problems for your computer. Remove the toolbars and recapture your performance. In the future, avoid adding new toolbars or taskbars to your desktop. If you find that removing a toolbar is a chore, search for a software removal tool that can help.

Start and stop programs as needed, rather than configuring them to run at startup. If you don’t know what your computer is running at any given time, you can visit Programs > Startup to see what your computer runs each time you boot up. These programs each represent a drain on your system’s memory, and in some cases, an additional drain on the free space on your hard disk. If you have several programs that are configured to start up when you turn the computer on, you could experience a significant performance drain, especially when you start yet-another application.

Turn off the applications you don’t need and reconfigure your startup items to include only those programs that are absolutely needed all the time. Starting up a program doesn’t take as much time as you think it does, and you can give your computer a performance boost by starting programs manually. By the same token, you should close and exit programs you are finished with. That will enable the computer to allocate the newly available memory to something else.

Photo Credit: Chris Metcalf, via Flickr