Archive for August, 2011
Which Computers Are Salvageable?
If a desktop computer is less than five years old, there’s still a lot of productive life left in it. Notebooks older than 3-4 years are on the very edge of usefulness, and they may not be able to be revived. Notebooks use older processor chips because they take less power. Unfortunately, they also process data more slowly, so their useful lifespan is actually shorter.
Newer desktop models can slow down for a variety of reasons. “Accumulation” is a big culprit. Accumulation of what? Just about everything! From too many programs running simultaneously to too much data stored on the hard disk, the list of conditions that can slow your computer down is long! Even dust accumulation inside the computer can make your computer run hotter than it should, placing thermal stress on the chips and potentially decreasing the computer’s lifespan.
How do you “recover” a slow computer? Far and away, the best and fastest “fix” for processing delays is adding more physical memory. The more memory you have, the faster your computer can work without having to page out stored data to memory. You will see a significant performance boost if you increase the amount of physical RAM in your computer.
After that, regular disk maintenance can also restore performance to a slow computer. One of the maintenance tools I use and recommend is SpeedUpMyPC 2011. SpeedUpMyPC 2011 is more than a registry cleaner. It’s an entire toolset that helps define and maintain solid computer performance over time. SpeedUpMyPC does keep your registry clean, but it also gives you the tools you need to look at your computer performance from a technician’s perspective. You can make measurements over time that quantify your computer’s performance, and find out what conditions improve or decrease your computer’s power.
SpeedUpMyPC 2011 works quickly, too. You can scan your computer and get a diagnostic report in about two minutes. More than a million users have downloaded SpeedUpMyPC 2011, so you can be sure that the product is safe for your computer.
Download your copy today and restore the performance in your PC.
Photo Credit: Daan Berg, via Flickr
No Silver Bullets
Unless you know exactly what’s slowing down your computer, you aren’t likely to find the one magic thing you can do to resolve your performance issues. Instead, you’re likely to find a handful of things you can do. By themselves, these individual steps may not make much of a performance difference for your computer, but combine them and your computer may start singing again.
Regular maintenance on your computer is as important as regular maintenance on your car. If you keep your computer well maintained you put yourself ahead of the game in two ways. First, you avoid accumulating problems that can slowly rob computer performance. Second, you can more easily detect performance problems when they first occur, giving you a better opportunity to resolve them.
Regular maintenance consists of getting rid of extraneous files; cleaning up your disk and defragmenting it: maintaining your file system; and monitoring your startup application list carefully. By not allowing your system to load unnecessary applications, utilities and toolbars, you can conserve your available memory for the applications you really want or need to run.
You can get a performance boost by increasing the amount of memory you have installed in your computer. By making available a larger amount of RAM, the applications you normally use will have more memory available to them. You’ll get a noticeable performance boost by adding memory.
Finally, you can improve your performance using a good registry cleaner. SpeedUpMyPC 2011 is more than a registry cleaner. It offers a full set of tools to help you optimize the performance of your computer. Using the tools in SpeedUpMyPC 2011, you can track the performance of your computer and eliminate the programs, utilities and configurations that slow your computer down and rob it of its ability to perform.
SpeedUpMyPC 2011 is easy to use and requires no special skills. The interface is straightforward, the scanning is both thorough and fast, and installation is a breeze. In just a few minutes, you can install SpeedUpMyPC 2011, scan your computer and fix issues that prevent your computer from performing at its peak.
Download your copy today and get your computer back up and running at full speed.
Photo Credit: eschipul, via Flickr
Memory Leaks Can Steal Working Memory
What is a memory leak? A memory leak occurs when an application does not (or cannot) release memory it has used. The longer a leak is active, the more memory your application will consume, and the less memory you’ll have left for other applications. Left unchecked, a memory leak will eventually consume all available memory and the computer will crash.
In the mean time, the memory leak will begin to affect computer performance. Your computer will slow down because it has to spend more time managing the remaining available memory. Memory leaks can occur in many different circumstances. Depending upon the kind of memory leak you’re experiencing, you may be able to resolve the leak by simply shutting down the offending application, or you may have to resort to more drastic measures like rebooting the computer.
A good way to avoid memory leakage is to shut down your applications once you’ve finished with them. Don’t allow applications to run for extended periods of time without restarting them or rebooting the computer. This prescription doesn’t apply to servers and server software, which are designed to run for months or even years at a time without a restart or reboot.
Any application can have a memory leak, but some apps, by virtue of their programming, are more prone to memory leakage than others. Most users don’t have the equipment and knowledge to properly or positively diagnose a memory leak. Further, since memory management is a function of the application’s programming, correcting a memory leak is certainly beyond the user’s capabilities. What isn’t beyond the user’s capability is limiting the impact a memory leak can have.
Be sure to shut down applications you’re not using. You can do this by simply quitting the application when you’re finished. A few apps (the Skype client comes to mind) will allow you to sign out without quitting the app itself. Quitting the app requires a second, discrete step. If you suspect an application is taking up a lot of memory, check the Task Manager to see what’s actually happening. If an application can’t quit or has stopped responding, use the Task Manager to shut it down.
Photo Credit: KrAzY KorY, via Flickr
Networking Can Slow Things Down
One of the real valuable parts of modern computing is network access. You can do a lot with a standalone computer, but you can do a lot more with a computer that’s attached to the network. Most people don’t realize that some of the basic protocols on which a modern network operates were designed before NASA went to the Moon for the first time, but it’s true.
Network protocols were designed to take unreliable network connections into account, so there’s a lot of chatter that happens between computers before any real work gets done. This chatter, which is absolutely necessary, does tend to slow down network operations, and can make your computer seem slower.
Small office/home office (SOHO) functions are also a welcome addition to some computing environments. These functions allow computers on small networks to share networked devices like printers and Internet connections, but it places one computer in the role of server. Back in the day, servers didn’t look much different than regular computers, and you could do on a server what you could do on a regular computer.
Today’s production servers are rack-mounted devices that don’t look anything like a computer you’d put on your desktop. I say this because SOHO functions can make a regular desktop (or laptop) computer behave like a server – except in some very critical ways! True servers have improved input-output (I/O) capabilities, a lot of working memory, faster processors and use a more robust operating system that can manage multiple connections. Desktop computers that are used as a server for other computers on the same network don’t have any of these advantages, so naturally their performance suffers – sometimes greatly.
If you are considering using a desktop computer as a server on your home network, be sure that it doesn’t bring along any existing performance problems before you put it into service. In other words, make sure your computer has sufficient memory, sufficient hard disk space and a clean registry before you put it into services as a “server.” Sometimes otherwise unused computers can perform admirably as servers, depending upon the task(s) you give them, but make sure they’re not also coping with undiagnosed performance killers.
Photo Credit: Docklandsboy, via Flickr
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