| Grampy said: First off I agree, Tom's Hardware is a super site! Secondly a few other things I would like to pass along. Being in IT and having friends come to me for advice, I wish I had a dollar for everyone that I kept from buying a new computer by getting them to do a few simple and relatively inexpensive steps .My Guide on Not Buying a New Computer 1) Remove all unnecessary programs, especially downloaded utilities and most especially any kind of registry cleaning programs. The less you f**k around with the registry the better. 2) Go through and turn off all the auto updating and checking programs. Guess what? QuickTime does not need to check for updates every five minutes. Also beware of hitchhikers. Almost everything you download today has a hidden check box that if you ignore you become the proud owner of the Goggle Toolbar, or another piece of useless background noise. 3) If there is a teenager living within 50 miles, go through and remove the 112 different instant messenger programs that are running constantly in the background. I have seen this alone bring a decent computer to its knees. 4) When you think you have removed all the performance robbing crap, then hit control, alt, delete and start Task Manager. Close down every other program and wait a few minutes, then click on performance. Your CPU Usage should be under 10%. If your computer is working very hard when you don't have anything running then something is running you don't know about and probably should. To find out, click on applications and see what's running. If nothing then you have to go to processes and that's pretty tricky because there will be a lot of things running and they will be hard to indentify. Don't just go through willy nilly cutting them off. If you see one in particular that you don't know and which is using a lot of CPU and Memory, Google the name and if it's anything nefarious you will probably find out. 5) Make sure you have a minimum of 25% - 33% of your main disk drive free. If not ,you need to get some stuff off there. Run disk cleanup and archive old files to CDs. Odds are that you already won't recognize your old computer it will be running so much better but if you want to invest some money and get better yet: 1) Max out your RAM. Stuff your computer with ram like a Xmas Turkey. Ram is far and away the cheapest way to improve performance. Watch for sales. RAM is almost a Cracker Jack prize these days. 2) Get a better video card, as big as you can comfortably afford. The amount of onboard dedicated video RAM is what's important. Don't be swayed by "available RAM" or shared RAM which means that every time you are doing anything graphically intensive you are stealing from your system RAM. The less you do this the better. Tom's Hardware always has up to date video card information often tested on the very game you want to play. 3) Watch for sales and treat yourself to a bigger and better video display. Once again read reviews. Check things like dot pitch, total resolution and look carefully at color and color depth. All monitors are not created equal. Although hidden behind various trade names, some monitors, and notebooks are much brighter than others often just because they have more bulbs to backlight the LCD panel. Beyond the brightness and contrast numbers, take along a good quality image that you are familiar with on a jump drive so that you can judge the color for yourself. Hope this helps. |
not bad, but you forgot about the other disk cleanup options.
