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Easy Tips to Boost Computer Performance

As you use your computer, you add more files to it; you store pictures in photo books; download your favorite songs; and perhaps even keep copies of your favorite movies. All of this can start to slow down your computer’s performance. You don’t have to delete your files to help your computer operate more efficiently, though. You just need to find a new place to save large pieces of information so that they will not interfere with your operating system.

External Hard Drives

Buying an external hard drive makes it much easier for you to keep all of the files that you want. As long as you purchase a fairly large drive, you can feel free to add HD movies, family pictures, and songs. When you keep your personal entertainment on an external hard drive, you free up resources within the computer. This makes it possible for the operating system to do its job better. Instead of feeling frustrated while you sit at the machine, you will be impressed by its speed.

Eliminate Old Files

Perhaps you don’t want to spend money on an external hard drive, but you still want your operating system to work more efficiently and quickly. You can start by deleting the old files that you never use anymore. You might have listened to that Justin Timberlake album over and over again for a few weeks, but that was five years ago. Maybe it’s time to let it and the other music, movies, and pictures go.

What are some of the old files that simply don’t have any business taken up space on your computer?

Filed Under: Computers, Internet Tagged With: Hard disk drive, Justin Timberlake, Operating system

Cleaning Your Computer

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Many people who have owned their computer for a year or longer begin to experience problems with it’s performance. This is very common and if you are experiencing a slow computer than you might want to consider some simple tips to fix it. Your computer isn’t unlike a car. It needs some basic tune-ups every so often to get it back to its tip top form.

The first thing you can do is go into your system tools menu and clean the disk space. Many times your computer is storing things that you don’t need. It’s wasteful and it can harm the integrity of the product. Your best bet is to get yourself on a schedule of cleaning it every month. This will keep it from getting slow.

Additionally you want to make sure that your cookies on your browser. This is in your internet options screen. Took many cookies can create a problem and that’s the last thing that you need. You have to make sure that you clean those every month as well. It will save you valuable time and stress.

Defragmenting your hard drive is another thing that you should be doing every month. Your computer has gaps in its memory that often makes it run slower. This will erase that. Make sure you defragment and allow an ample amount of time to get the job done. It will make all the difference in the world. You have to do your best to keep your computer running at an optimum level.

Filed Under: Computers, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Defragmentation, Hard disk drive, Microsoft Windows

Computer Problems: Ways to prevent data loss

Nothing is more frustrating than working hours on a computer document to discover a system problem caused the data to become corrupted and lost forever. There is no way to recover the loss and now must start all over again.

Here are a few recommendations to prevent loss of data:

Auto save

Many word processing applications have an auto save feature that can be turned on when creating a document. Every few minutes the document automatically saves safeguarding the document should the application fail or the power supply shutdown.

Secondary hard drive

When saving a document in Word, it will usually place the document under the My Documents folder on the main hard drive. This is the worst place for the data because if anything happens to the operating system, the only resolution is to reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system. Upon reinstallation, everything previously on the hard drive is lost. The best solution is to have a second hard drive installed for documents to be saved on. The hard drive can either be internal or external as it is not impacted by corrupted operating systems.

Backup

Saving a document or file in one place is not a good solution. Systems break down or get stolen, CDs get scratched, and floppy disks can get erased or copied over. You should always save data on a hard drive and then backup it up by burning the information to a CD, or copying it to a USB flash drive or floppy disk. For important information, the data should be backed up and then stored in a safety deposit box or fire-proof vault.

Attachments

When receiving email attachments, always run a virus scan before opening it to prevent damage to your system. Also be aware of automatically saving documents that come as attachments. If you do a lot of document collaboration, the email document may have the same document name as one already saved to the hard drive. You run into a problem of overwriting the original document. You can set your email program to save attachments in specified folders.

As a last resort, consider printing important documents. While it means having to retype the information again later, at least you have not lost any content and have to start over from scratch.

Filed Under: Common Problems, Computers Tagged With: Hard disk drive, USB flash drive

Desktop Computers: Tips for buying a computer

Purchasing a computer is a big and costly decision that requires a bit of research. The following is a guideline of tips and requirements to keep in mind when making your purchase:

New or Used

Analyze the pros and cons of purchasing a new computer system versus one that has been refurbished. Traditionally a refurbished computer is one that has been previously owned and examined by the manufacturer for defects or other issues before reselling to a consumer. When buying a refurbished computer do the following:

Inspect the system for any signs of damage by examining ports and running the operating system
Make sure the operating system and all programs installed on the system come with CDs and manuals
Obtain a warranty for the system to guarantee maintenance or replacement

Operating System

Most people purchase a system with an operating system they are already familiar with using. Unsure which one is right for you? Then consider reading reviews on the advantages and disadvantages of different operating systems including Windows and MAC.

Components

To configure a system, you need components. Take into consideration your system requirements when deciding on the following:

What type of case do you want; tower or desktop? Consider desk configuration, space, and later upgrades to system.
Do you require additional CD media to burn CDs or DVDs?
Does the hard drive have enough space and the correct amount of speed? Will you need additional external or internal hard drives?
What type of memory does the system come with? Can it be upgraded easily and what are the costs?
What type of processor does it have? Check out all the options available.
Are you using the computer for gaming or high graphics? Does the video card GPU and memory meet your specific requirements?
Plan on editing or mixing sound? Are the sound card capabilities sufficient?

Considerations

It is impossible to say which brand of computer is better than another as everyone has an opinion. Instead, take a look at the extra options offered by the manufacturers:

What add-on accessories are available, the costs, and are other accessories compatible?
Check out the return policy and other warranties that come with your system
What kind of service and support is available to the consumer? Are there costs involved and are they available 24/7?

Buying a computer requires quite a bit of research and consideration, but taking the time now will save you both time and money later on.

Filed Under: Computers, Operating Systems Tagged With: Hard disk drive, Operating system

Buying a New Computer?

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Buying a new computer is a very stressful experience. Unless you know everything there is to know about computers, you will have some reservations and a lot of questions when buying your computer. So, here’s a few things to keep in mind.

1. Laptop vs. Desktop
This is the biggest, and probably the easiest, question to answer. So, the main thing to remember here is to think of how you will be using your computer. You should also think about your internet situation at home. Do you already have a wireless router? If not, you will have to plug in your laptop whenever you want to go online, so you might as well have a desktop.

2. Shop Around and Compare Prices
There are specials on computers all the time. So, you will really benefit from doing a few price comparisons instead of just impulse buying. You should also look at in store specials as well as online specials. Some stores give different discounts online that you won’t be able to find in the stores, and vice versa.

3. RAM
One critical thing to look at when buying a computer is the RAM, or random access memory. You basically want to get as much as you can afford, because this helps your computer run faster. When your RAM is used up, your computer will start to run a lot slower than if it was available. Another thing that will help your computer’s speed is the processor. So, if you want your system to run as smooth as possible, be sure to look at processor speeds and RAM closely.

4. Hard Drive
One thing that you really don’t need to worry too much about is the hard drive capacity. They have external hard drives available to store all your information, so if you have to cut one corner, then the hard drive capacity is it.

Filed Under: Computers, Hardware Tagged With: Hard disk drive, Laptop, Random-access memory

Need More Memory?

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It seems like no matter how much memory you get for your computer, you always use it all up. Back in the day, no one would even think that they could use one gigabyte of memory, and these days that’s a fairly small amount. Here’s some tips to help you manage them memory on your computer.

First, make sure that you are only saving the things that you actually need. If you graduated from high school ten years ago, you honestly don’t need that term paper from your English class anymore. So, periodically go through all your documents and files to make sure you actually need the things that are taking up space.

Next, avoid saving more than one copy or something to your hard drive. You want to make sure that everything on your computer is backed up, but your hard drive is not the place to do it. The more memory you have taken up, the slower your computer will perform. So, one option is to buy an external hard drive for your computer. They are relatively inexpensive, small, and hold tons of stuff. For instance, they have a two terabyte (or 2,000 gig) hard drive now. So, this is the perfect place to store all of your pictures, movies, and other large files that are eating up your internal hard drive.

Another good way to store your files is to burn them to a DVD. DVD’s hold about 4 gigs of information, so you can fit a lot of pictures on one DVD. This is also a good way to share pictures with parents, grandparents, and other relatives. Another option similar to DVD is using a USB drive to store information. They are portable and very convenient, and 64 gig capacity models are pretty readily available these days.

Whatever you decide to do, just make sure that you test out the backed up files before you delete the originals!

Filed Under: Computers, Hardware Tagged With: DVD, Hard disk drive, USB flash drive