Faithful column reader Ben writes, “Can you recommend one of those free "Speed up / Clean up" software programs.” It is not uncommon to run into these types of programs as I visit with clients. There seems to be this fixation on a one button cure for slow from some company that wants to develop products that will convert our Yugo to a Ferrari and give it away for free. Users have sworn that a free $69 program made their computer run twice as fast as before. Asked how they benchmarked the computer before and after the fix, realization sets in that it was probably the placebo effect and their wallet was lighter.
Even worse, many of the tools that will help our digital domestique maintain its perky stature are already on our computers. Others are included with software we install such as anti virus/malware programs. The key is to benchmark our computer first and to do that we can download PC-Wizard free from this link, ftp://ftp.cpuid.com/pc-wizard/pc-wizard_2012.2.11-setup.exe. (Martha, he said FREE.) Be VERY cautious as the reason the program is free is the site is littered with download buttons that will install programs but not PC-Wizard. So if the download starts and it doesn’t say PC-Wizard cancel and try again. Install the program and there are lots of different ways to look at our binary buddy’s performance. Click on Benchmark and choose Windows Performance Rating. This is a general overall rating based on all the components of the PC. Now we have a starting point.
To speed up our calculating companion it is important to recognize that there is hardware speed, software speed and Internet speed. Hardware speed relates to spin rate of hard drives, processor speeds, RAM memory speeds and other resources. No software fix will alter these. Software speed pertains to how programs utilize ram memory and process tasks. No software fix will alter these either. Internet speed pertains to how fast our Internet provider provides data from the Internet to our PC.
What makes our PC seem to be slowing down? We tend to load them up with more programs that try to start when we turn on the PC including Fix it/Clean it programs. They compete for computer resources and everything seems to run slower. Examine what is starting up and ask is it running all the time or can it run only when needed? We need to remove temporary files that may be causing our antivirus to scan longer than necessary. And probably the greatest culprit to slow Internet performance is the installation of Toolbars. There are thousands of them, and not a single user has been able to tell me how they got installed. Rocketrebate, Ask, Community, Recipe and Babylon toolbars just to name a few. These toolbars tend to change our home page, alter our search engines and redirect our search results.
Stay tuned, next some tools for tuning up our PC.
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