Q. What is the difference between Old and New Computers today?

A. In most cases, about 3 weeks.

It’s a sad story really, you buy yourself a brand new computer, you get the box on the floor and start pulling out all the components. After sifting through all the Styrofoam and plastic you find all the pieces for the computer and you put it together. Then you press that power button and ZAP! It lights up and the newest version of Windows opens up and everything is responsive and zippy. You open a program and BAM! It open right away! This new computer is amazing, you say to yourself, my life is going to be so much better from this point forward. No more waiting 10 minutes for my computer to start, no more losing unsaved documents when my computer crashes.

For a little while at least this is true. Your computer continues to run fast and works perfectly, but then after a couple weeks the novelty wears off and all of a sudden you start cursing again. ‘Geez my computer takes forever to load!’ you find yourself saying. How did this happen?

Well there are a few common reasons for this to happen and we have listed these below:

It’s not you, it’s me

We’re sorry to say it but quite often you are the biggest reason for your computer slowing down. We all do it, as soon as we get our new computer we spend the next couple weeks installing everything that we had on our old computer onto our new one. The reason that your new computer is so snappy is because all of this software ISN’T on it. You need to ask yourself, what software do I really need on this computer? Any software that you have installed on your computer that you don’t use does 3 things:

1. It takes up room on your hard drive.

2. It quite often creates it’s own Windows StartUp entry so the program starts when you computer starts. This slows down you Windows start time.

3. It will often create a process running in the background of your computer that checks for updates for the application even when it the application itself is not running which slows down your computer further.

Too many programs!

OK so you have all this software already installed. So which programs should you focus on removing? There are a few key types of application which are major culprits at consuming resources. These are:

• Printer Software: When you install a new printer it is unbelievable how much crap is installed onto your computer. Install a HP printer and then go and look in your HP folder in you Windows Program list. It’s not uncommon that you see a list of 10+ applications within this folder that you don’t use. Get rid of the ones you don’t. They take up space and quite often most of them have services and processes that run in the background which slow down your computer.
• Instant messaging clients: Instant messaging is a great way to keep in touch with friends and to communicate with people for work but the problem is that everyone is on different instant messaging clients.  If you have MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk all running at the same time that takes up a fair chunk of RAM! Uninstall all of these applications and get yourself a universal chat client such as Pidgin or Trillian. These programs allow you to login to a number of different IM clients from the one program which uses a fraction of the resources.
• Security Software: OK this will be a controversial statement. You don’t need more than one security program! Pick one really good security suite and then use just that. Security programs are designed to monitor everything that you do so that when something happens that is malicious it will tell you. If you have 3 different programs doing this it will cripple your computer! Additionally, different brand security applications are not designed to get along and play nice. Get one program that protects you from everything. We would recommend Norton Internet Security as a paid option or AVG as a free option. Remove any others.
• New computer Trialware: These days, unless you specifically choose not to get it, your new computer will be bundled with a bunch Trialware (better known as crapware). This is a grab for more cash. Computer companies want you to buy these programs so they can make more money from you. Get rid of all this stuff.

Every piece of software on your computer thinks it is the most important thing installed on your computer.

Every software company (yes including us) thinks that their software is the most important software on your computer. Because of this most software when you install it will create an entry in the Windows StartUp process so the program will start when you start windows. Every program you add slows down the Windows StartUp process. Now most programs should have an option within their settings to have the program start on Windows StartUp. Disable this option in all the programs you don’t need running when the computer first boots up.

Alternatively, within Registry Reviver under the utilities area there is a StartUp manager which shows you all the programs that have entries in the Windows StartUp process. You can uncheck the ones you don’t want starting here and the next time you start your computer those application won’t run. Don’t be afraid to disable a bunch of different entries. You aren’t going to screw anything up and if you notice something that you are missing you can always go back and turn it back on.

You pay for what you get.

There is a huge number of low priced computers on the market now. The old saying is true, you pay for what you get. A lot of computer manufacturers will fool you by telling you that a computer has ‘4 gigs of RAM’ and you think that is a steal at that price. The truth is that the amount of RAM a computer has is not the only factor influencing computer speed. The speed of the RAM (Measured in Mhz) is also important and quite often these low priced computers have slow components which is destined to disappoint. Do you research on the best components around and then know what to expect when you buy a low end computer.

Pick a fast browser.

Most people spend all their time in a web browser writing emails or surfing the web. Use a fast browser. Internet Explorer is OK but the problem is that it is too easy for you to unsuspectingly get toolbars installed onto the browser via programs you install which slow it down. Put your hand up if you have a Google, Yahoo or Ask.com toolbar installed and can’t remember where you got it from. Internet Explorer is also most likely to be made vulnerable to security problems because it has the highest market share between the browsers. We would recommend Google Chrome. Right now you can’t install add ons to Chrome which keeps it running fast and in most test you see Chrome comes out on top for speed.

We hope that these tips help you get your computer back to running at optimal levels. Remember that your computer is at it’s fastest when you first but it (unless you upgrade components), it’s about how you use it that determines how fast it is from that point forward. But we are here to help you get it as close to that new computer feel as possible!

The ReviverSoft Team