Since I'm the official computer geek everywhere I go, people tend to ask me to fix their computers because they're running too slow. This is normally what I do (or tell them to do) to their computers to help them.
1. Uninstall programs you never use
Head over to the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs and uninstall those which you don't use. Why would you need Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer when you always use Firefox? Why would you want to have Azureus and uTorrent (especially when uTorrent is much lighter)?
2. Do not use Norton or McAffee antivirus software
These are BIG memory and CPU hogs, and they're expensive to boot. I often recommend a better, free antivirus called Avast, which is faster and more light on system resources.
3. Use a faster webbrowser
Most webbrowsers are heavy on system resources. Particularly, Firefox has a lot of memory leak problems. One thing you could do is remove extension and themes that you don't use from Firefox. Or you could use an entirely different browser. On a previous post, I mentioned K-meleon, an extremely fast, extremely customizable alternative to Firefox. If you find that your computer gets too slow when surfing the web, try it and see the difference. And please, please, please do not use Internet Explorer.
4. Use QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative
Both QuickTime and Real Player suck up your memory by running in the background. If you use any of these programs, I highly recommend you uninstall them and get QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative, which don't run unless you want to play a file. Best of all, streaming media works exactly the same.
5. Do not use an indexer like Windows Desktop Search
While they are extremely useful, desktop search engines like Windows Desktop Search and Google Desktop take up a lot of CPU and memory when indexing. If you want your computer to be faster, you should uninstall or disable them.
6. Generally, use lighter alternatives to software you already use
If, after doing all of the above, you still feel that your computer is way too slow, try searching for alternative, faster software that can do what the bloated programs you use can. For example:
- Choose foobar2000 over Winamp, iTunes and WMP
- Choose uTorrent over Azureus
- Choose Abiword and Gnumeric instead of Word/Writer and Excel/Calc, and so on.
Overall, following these tips will make you computer run much faster. But if it's still not fast enough...
7. Get rid of Windows, once and for all
This is usually the first piece of advice I give to someone with a slow computer. ;) If you really want a fast computer experience, Windows is not for you. I highly recommend Xubuntu, a lightning-fast configuration of the famous Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.
That's really all the advice I can give you. If you have anything to add to make a Windows computer faster, don't hesitate to leave a comment.
Posts
