Lexington Computer Repair Blog

When we get calls here from computer users, the three most common questions we get are:

1. How do I tell if I have a virus?
2. Should I buy a computer that runs Vista?
3. How can I speed up my computer?

I recently sent these tips about the last item to Hartland Computer Services customers (some suggestions on the first question can be found here, and the quick answer to the second question is “no”).

Speeding Up Your XP or Vista Computer

1. Add more memory -
When Windows runs out of RAM (Random Access Memory) it starts moving programs out of memory and onto the hard disk, this slows down the computer – often considerably. Here is a very general rule of thumb, if you are running Windows XP, use at least 1GB (one Gigabyte) of RAM, if you are running Vista, 2GB is normally sufficient. To find out how much RAM you have, go to the Windows Start Menu, open Control Panel then click on “System” (“System” may be under something like “Performance and Maintenance” depending on how your menus are set up). You’ll find your RAM listed there next to the speed of your processor.

2. Get rid of those dumb toolbars –
The latest trick of hardware and software manufacturers is to sneak a search toolbar into your browser. These toolbars, by Yahoo, Google, McAfee, Ask and others take up screen space and, if you get more than one of them, often fight with each other, slowing down your internet experience. To stop the madness, open your browser and go to “Tools” then choose “Add-ons” or “Manage Add-ons”, look for entries like “Yahoo Toolbar” and “Ask Toolbar”, highlight them and then click the “Disable” button. When you restart your browser they’ll be gone and quite often you will feel a noticeable improvement in browsing speed.

3. Ease up (a little) on security –
The level of security provided by many of the commercial software “suites”, for example Norton 360 and McAfee Security Suite, is quite high. The real-world equivalent might be like living in a gated community with 24-hour police patrols, door locks, bars on the windows, a moat a drawbridge, surveillance cameras, a helicopter above…well, you get the point. I’ve seen the processing overhead of these suites drag the performance of an otherwise decent computer to the ground. Personally, I prefer a just a good anti-virus program (most of my customers know I prefer Avira AntiVir, Kaspersky has a good reputation as well) and Windows Firewall (you should probably add an on-demand spyware checker like SuperAntiSpyware as well). Whatever you do, do not run two anti-virus programs on the same machine, they will tend to fight each other, miss viruses and slow your computer to a crawl.

4. Test your internet connection –
For most people, “slow internet” and “slow computer” are one in the same because they have the same impact on you as a user. It might be helpful to know if your slow computer is actually a problem with your internet service. For those with Insight Broadband, you can go to their test site, found here, to test the speed of your connection. Personally, I suspect that Insight’s test always tells you that your internet connection is great (and I have some evidence to back that up) so you might want to try an independent site like www.speedtest.net as well. If your results are less than say 9Mbps (that’s 9 Megabits per second) you might want to call Insight and have a chat with them (I’ve generally found them to be pretty responsive).

5. Scan for viruses –
No advice on speeding up your computer can be complete without a recommendation to scan for viruses. I won’t belabour this point here. Make sure your Antivirus program is up-to-date – that means virus definitions from today- and run a full scan of your computer (as per my last email to you, you should make sure you are not running a bogus Antivirus program as well).

I’ve been developing a website for The Hound Welfare Fund. They are a charity that looks after foxhounds after their hunting days are over and they enter retirement. While I have designed a number of commercial websites, I have to admit that I am not an avid developer. I am very very picky about the the colours, layouts, buttons, separators and every niggling detail of the site for which I am responsible. While I am more than happy to give direction, feedback and the odd encouragement to a developer who is coding the site, I don’t much enjoy being my own developer because I am such a pain in the ass to work for. It can get quite tedious.

On this occasion I was asked to develop the site in Dreamweaver CS4. I’ve become pretty proficient at the now outdated Microsoft Frontpage and I’ve found Kompozer pretty reasonable to work with but this is my first development in Dreamweaver. I don’t have much to say about Dreamweaver other than that the closest thing I can think of to switching to Dreamweaver from other packages is when I switched to an HP calculator from TI. For the uninitiatied, most HP calculators work in a system called RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) so if you are adding 2 and 3 together you enter “2″, then “3″ then “+”. It takes some getting used to. So does Dreamweaver.

Anyway, if you are starting your first project in Dreamweaver, I can recommend a site called TheSiteWizard.com that has a great Dreamweaver tutorial to get you started on your first site. I think the author, Christopher Heng, does a great job of stepping you through the initial development and getting you used to the (rather strange) controls in Dreamweaver CS4. Be sure to donate to his site too if you find it useful.