ICT News and Updates

Unlike a human body, every time you work out your computer, its gets bloated. Sluggish. Slower. It’s easy to blame your PC; it must be the hardware. You start thinking you could have spent more money on a bigger and better brand. But just like a car — whether it’s a new Porsche or a used Ford station wagon, if you, the driver, don’t keep it oiled, it’s bound to drive you nuts with mechanical problems.

Computers aren’t so different from any product you use — despite the technology, you’re the brains behind keeping your equipment in tiptop shape. Without exercising a few maintenance tips, you’ll find your PC grinding to a near-halt. The steps to a smooth-running, faster computer are simple — and free. Here’s a starter checklist to “re-charging” your machine:

1. Whether your PC is a dinosaur or the newest piece of wizardry on the market, if you go on the Internet (and obviously you do if you’re reading this), your computer will get slower with time for one reason: Spyware. It’s impossible to figure out how many companies out there are tracking you, but it is easy to shut them down (and keep your PC running faster) by installing a anti-spyware program. PC Magazine’s #1 Editor’s Choice for bumping off the thugs who track you is Spyware Doctor (pctools.com/spyware-doctor.com). It’s free, as is Spybot (safer-networking.org/index2.html), another highly rated program. And don’t forget to install or update your anti-virus programs, which are more malicious to your computer. AVG Free (free.avg.com) is an easy-to-use program to keep things running.

2. So maybe your spyware programs are in place, but it’s easy to forget those simple, but essential housekeeping tasks every PC requires. It’s time to dump those temp programs that tend to get forgotten during everyday computer work. Go to C:Documents and SettingsUsernamelocal settings, and DELETE. A few hundred megabytes of temporary bits of information can make things chug more than you think. Leave the file folder, but toss the junk inside it. Voila! You’ve gotten rid of excess stuff slowing your hardware at no charge.

3. Focus on this much-discussed, but often-ignored tip: Defrag, defrag, defrag. Files come and go, but they leave thousands of fragments of things that sit and slow your computer. Open the Control Panel, click on Administrative Tools, then click Computer Management. You’ll notice Disk Defragmenter under “Storage” on the left. Run the defragmenter on any drives you have. (That goes for any flash drives you might be using, as well.) It’s amazing how many open spaces can be filled with this tool, to keep the machine running meaner and leaner.

4. Another no-charge way to hurry up your processor is to get rid of Windows eye candy (boxes under icons, important things like that) — the visual settings that don’t do much except slow your work down. The best way to accelerate your PC is to let Windows know you’d like the best performance possible please. You do this by accessing the Control Panel, clicking on System, click on the “Advanced” tab, then click the “Performance” option. Under “Visual Effects,” select “Adjust For Best Performance.” Click the OKs necessary, and you should see a speedier (and maybe cleaner-looking) computer the next time you boot up.

5. To truly optimize your computer, the Internet is chock-full of free clean-up utilities — to do all the tasks you might not know about or be able to find without a 500-page reference book at your side. One of the best all-around utilities for speeding up your hardware is Glary Utilities, a program that finds all the junk files, invalid registry entries and pieces of information that do nothing but slow your PC down. It’s free, and after a first run-through, your computer will be (almost) clean as a whistle.

It’s hard enough keeping up with our fast-paced world of information. But with just a bit of time and a few maintenance checkups, you can at least manage your computer-oriented life in more of a hurry.