Speed Up Computer

Speed is a wonderful thing. In this new web 2.0 age of ours, we have gotten quite used to having everything we need to know in a matter of a few point and click seconds. But, when some mysterious computer ailment ends up pulling the rug out from under us, knocking us back to the time of Pentium II processors and dial up, we pull out our hair in frustration and lament on our bad fortune. I guess once you get used to blazing fast internet speeds, live streaming videos, and running multiple apps, it is hard to take a step back and actually have a little patience.

Information Overload

Ironically, as computer processing speeds increase, so do our expectations as to what we want our computers to do. Many computers that are just a year or two old end end up bogging down as we try to utlize the applications of tomorrow with the technology of yesterday. Do you remeber when you were happy just to send some e-mail and maybe look up a recipe for banana bread? Now you want to IM your face book friend while watching a live streaming video from the Food Network.  It seems that no matter how fast we make these machines of ours, we are going to expect them to do more. My suggestion to you people who constantly want to be on the cutting edge is to purchase a brand spanking new computer every six months. I am sure you have money tree somewhere in which you can just pluck off some cashin order to do this.

However, if you do not happen to have one of these trees,and are stuck with having the same old computer for three or four years, there are several things you can do keep your pc running like it just came out of the box such as installing regular software updates, having a good firewall, scheduling regular hard drive cleanings, perfoming a routine registry check, and making sure nothing has been accidently unplugged by your child or pet.

Its whats on  inside

While we all could use a little more DDR Ram in our lives at times, sometimes the solution to making our computers chug along a little faster lies within the programming itself.  Certain applicatons that we download could end up hogging all the memory usage and make everything else run slow.  I like to open the Task Manager up periodically and see what unwanted apps I have running and how much memory they like to take up.  Sometimes doing this is akin to actually looking at the calorie chart at McDonalds. While it is tempting to close down everything but the basics, doing this may cause your operating system to shut down. Shut down the things you know you are not using and then perhaps go into the control panel and remove the ones that you know you are not going to use.

Clash of the Browsers

Sometimes a slow computer is caused by having too many programs wanting to do the same thing. Recently, I had my computer running at snail pace because of the Browser I had ended up downloading from my new ISP.  The friendly guy wanted to do everything for me and just could not stand it if I used someone else. It would pop open on start up and like a hyperactive urchin it would not leave me alone until I paid attention to it. This got old real fast and I was finally forced to remove it.  I have also had the same problem with virus protection programs, which seem to live by the code of the Highlander (there can be only one). These clashing programs can end up slowing your computer down to a crawl as they fight each other for processing and memory usage.

Ghost Programs

Some programs you delete, never seem to go away. Even if you go through all the steps and properly uninstall them via your control panel, entrenched pieces of them remain refusing to leave. This is where having a good registry cleaner can come in handy. These programs are usually good at rooting out these little pieces of code and untangling from the programming mass.