Speed Up Computer

The Gartner Group has indicated that it expects enterprise IT sales to slow in 2012, compared to sales of IT products and services in 2011 and in earlier years. Gartner bases its prediction on the assumption that the economy is either entering or has already entered a recession. IT purchasing will slow as a result to about 4 percent, down from about 6 percent this year. Does that really mean slow computers? Not directly, but typically it means that businesses will be hanging on to their IT resources longer than they would otherwise.

Slow Growth Means Tough Decisions

Slow growth in IT also means fewer new hires and longer upgrade cycles for software and services. With elongated product replacement cycles, computers that are currently in service have an increased likelihood of losing performance over time. That will translate into slower computers. It also means that fewer new desktops – the ones that typically use the faster, more efficient processors – will be deployed in 2012.

If businesses are slow to purchase new computers and IT services, what are consumers going to be doing? Consumer spending on computers will remain comparatively healthy, according to Gartner. To date, PC shipments have not met initial expectations, but the industry analysts don’t expect sales to remain perpetually slow. Computer sales in 2012 are expected to increase slightly, as consumers move to take advantage of newer PC technologies, thinner and smaller devices, mobile devices, longer battery life and touch screen technologies.

Overall, Gartner expects PC shipments to increase by nearly 11 percent by the end of 2012, although it acknowledges that the first part of 2012 will be slow. Computer shipments will be affected by the outcome of the debt crisis in Europe. If European countries cannot find an equitable resolution to their spending woes, this forecast may turn out to be exceptionally optimistic.

In the mean time, if your own personal economy doesn’t permit the purchase of a brand new computer, consider ways in which you can get the most mileage out of the computer you have. That would include ensuring that your computer stays as responsive as possible.

One of my recommendations is SpeedUpMyPC 2011. This program will help keep your operating system in good working order by helping to clear out performance clogs before they can impact your computing experience. In addition to removing performance obstacles, SpeedUpMyPC 2011 can help you optimize your computer performance to meet your specific computing needs.

SpeedUpMyPC 2011 has been downloaded more than a million times and is hard at work making sure that your computer has what it needs to perform at its best.

Photo Credit: Easterbilby, via Flickr

One of the least expensive, most beneficial ways to speed up computer performance is defragmentation. Defragmentation delivers more than just better computer performance to the user; it also reduces energy consumption and makes better use of network resources. Given that defragmentation tools come with every Windows computer, (no extra tools to buy), dollar for dollar, you can’t beat the value that defragmentation offers.

Defragmentation As A Green Practice

If you’ve noticed that your computer performance has waned over the months (or years) your computer has been in service, you may be tempted to replace the computer with a newer model. After all, newer models offer more hard disk space, more RAM address space and faster processor(s). Getting rid of old electronics, however, isn’t necessarily green.

Most landfills charge (by weight) to dispose of old electronics. The reason for this is simple; much of what’s inside a computer can be recycled but the recycling process is expensive. Metal cases can be recycled; gold plating in connectors and copper wiring can also be recycled. Other components (like chips) contain things like gallium and arsenide (an arsenic-based compound) that can’t be deposited safely in landfills. In addition, computers often have long-life batteries that contain toxic metals like lithium, nickel, cadmium, or lead or corrosive substances that can be harmful to groundwater. Computers are also loaded with plastics and other materials that simply don’t break down, even after hundreds of years. By getting more life out of your computer, you reduce the number of old electronics that must be disposed of.

Even before a computer is end-of-life, defragmentation can still reduce the amount of energy needed to operate the computer. Defragmentation helps reduce the time required to perform certain actions; you can see this reduction when you use the computer. This reduction in operating time can also benefit less visible operations that take place on the network, or at night when the computer is otherwise not in use.

Late night updates are downloaded faster, and use fewer network resources; client-server interactions are faster and place less of a burden on server resources; backup operations take less time and are more efficient. This can be incredibly important when you’re working with a large computer base. Reducing backup times by 25%-50% per computer can mean substantial savings; the faster the backup task is completed, the faster the network resources can enter their power-saving modes. To speed up your computer, defragmentation makes technical sense, but it also makes financial sense!

Photo Credit: aubergene, via Flickr

Intel reported record highs in the second quarter of 2010 in terms of revenues, gross margin, operating profits and earnings per share, thanks to explosive sales driven by enterprise IT purchases. Many firms had put off upgrading their computer systems and servers but are now moving forward with hardware upgrade plans. In many cases, the upgrades are necessary to avoid added costs of maintaining obsolete or slow computers.

IT Buying Has Slowed In Recent Years

During this recession, consumers, rather than enterprise-level purchasers have largely driven the pace of computer chip sales. Enterprise purchasing has been put on hold as companies try to stretch their existing hardware inventory to save money. The end result of this kind of economy is noticeably slower computer performance and pent-up demand for faster computers.

Now, enterprise level purchasers are at the point where hardware replacement isn’t an option. At the same time, Microsoft has introduced a new version of their Windows OS that is much more palatable to the enterprise-level users, in large part because Microsoft has also upgraded its server platforms.

Intel and other chip makers are now the beneficiaries of past years’ corporate economy. What can corporate IT consumers expect to gain from the newest chip sets? First, corporate users gain the ability to dual-boot, which means experimentation with Linux, Macintosh and other non-Microsoft operating systems. IT departments may begin to offer the functions their users want without having to manage multiple desktop platforms.

Second, on the server side, corporate IT departments will have more flexibility to virtualize servers. Virtual servers can free the corporation from having to maintain separate servers for enterprise-level functions.

Third, corporate IT deployments may begin to take advantage of larger memory-addressing capacity – another side of the server virtualization coin. The latest chipsets will begin to break the traditional memory addressing barriers by offering workaround solutions that will both enable a larger cache of installed memory and faster processing for server-based computing.

In the mean time, computer users can recover some of the “speed potential” of their desktop installations by increasing the amount of installed memory on desktop units, and by performing regular maintenance on computers, such as defragmenting the hard drive and performing registry maintenance with a trusted registry cleaner like RegCure.

By performing regular maintenance on computer systems, users can expect to maintain or improve the performance of their existing systems and in some cases, can even delay the need to upgrade computer hardware.

Photo Credit: Uwe Hermann, via Flickr

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.