People are in a hurry these days. Even during the summer, when things are supposed to relax a bit, there’s little room for a big performance drop, especially when it comes to your computer. Many people take vacations during the summer and bringing a laptop along to check email by the pool, let the kids watch a DVD in the car or in the hotel room at night, or just browse the Web may seem quite natural. The computing environment on the road may not be so conducive to good performance and you may find you have a bona fide slow computer on your hands.

Making A Few Adjustments Can Help Speed Up Your Computer

If you plan to pack a laptop computer, keeping in mind these things may help you spend more of your vacation time enjoying the scenery and less time performing technical support on your computer.
Don’t Expect Much Out Of The Hotel’s Internet Connection Some hotels offer free in-room wireless connectivity but that doesn’t mean you’ll be blazing along as you might at home or work. Often, hotel connections are limited to 128K/s or less. Good for checking email and not good for much else. Also, you may need to create new network settings for your computer in order to get an IP address and DNS service.
Don’t assume that paying for a connection will get you … well… a better connection. Some hotels charge for Internet service, but the service they provide isn’t any better than what you’d get from a free wireless connection. Check the hotel’s information about guaranteed upload and download speeds, and whether or not the maximum advertised speed is guaranteed or not. Some hotels charge by the hour for Internet access, while others charge by the 24-hour period. If you can get away with paying for service by the hour, time your connections to the Internet carefully to minimize your out-of-pocket costs.
Turn Off What You Don’t Need If you can, turn off the network services you can’t use on the hotel network. This might include Bluetooth and wireless networking capabilities. If you can’t use these services but leave them on all the time, you’ll soon find that your battery is drained. The same is true for brightness and volume controls. Turn them down to conserve your battery life.
Check your A/V before you go Hotel networks and public networks may not be terribly secure. Check your A/V software and apply the latest virus and malware definitions before you leave. Avoid connecting to your bank and credit card accounts using a wireless network or the hotel’s public workstations, while you’re at it.
Defrag your hard disk and clean your registry . In preparation for your trip, defragment your laptop’s hard disk and clean out the registry. That should help speed up your computer, even when you’re working in trying circumstances!

Photo Credit: Jerzy Kociatkiewicz

Tags: registry fixer, slow computer, speed up computer