January 12, 2013
Do you defrag your hard drive? If not, you should and you must understand the importance before you read on. There are some excellent articles on MakeUseOf which discuss defragmenting, but perhaps the best and most recent article is 3 Excellent Defrag Utilities & Why You Still Need to Defragment In 2012 by Tina. Smart Defrag wasn’t included in the "3 excellent defrag utilities" in her article, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t excellent.
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October 31, 2012
Has your computer loaded this webpage yet? If it has, you’ll be halfway toward working out just why it seems to be running so slowly. There are many reasons for desktop and laptops to chug along at their own, slow pace, defying the system specs and performing more like a relic from the 1990s. Where you’re browsing the web, word processing or gaming, poor performance will cause problems.
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October 9, 2012
Accessing files from the hard drive is a speed limiting step in operating a computer. Hard drives used to be a major bottle neck and fragmentation of data slowed them down even further. With the New Technology File System (NTFS), terabyte sized hard drives, and solid state drives setting new standards, fragmentation has become a non-issue and defrag utilities are almost obsolete. Almost!
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September 25, 2012
Individual tools such as CCleaner and Defraggler have received their fair share of attention here at MUO, and deservingly so. As a bigger picture, Piriform (the brains behind those two pieces of software and others) has really solidified their name in the world of PC maintenance and optimization, and they continue to push out awesome tools that remain updated. For years, these guys have kept our systems in top shape.
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September 18, 2012
Much advice has been given on how to keep your computer running smoothly, as well as how to fix it when it has become slow. We have even published a Windows on Speed guide, written by yours truly. One thing that hardly ever makes Windows faster, however, is cleaning the registry. The often repeated tale, that registry cleaners can improve a computer's performance, is a myth, and can actually cause serious issues.
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May 7, 2012
File system fragmentation is a major cause of sluggish performance on Windows. The default Windows Disk Defragmenter does a passable job of the basics, but Auslogics Disk Defrag Pro ($29.95) goes above and beyond. We’re giving away 25 copies of Auslogics Disk Defrag Pro for Windows worth a total of $750 to 25 lucky readers this week! Read on for your chance to win.
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April 4, 2012
Regular PC maintenance is often neglected, leading to lost hard drive space and a bloated operating system that runs increasingly slower. To avoid a dreaded Windows re-installation, you should perform a thorough cleanup at least once a year. In part 1 of this article, I took you through a physical cleaning checklist for your computer. For part 2 I have created a spring cleaning checklist for the digital environment.
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September 12, 2011
Alternative defragmentation tools have been mentioned for years and years now, as most people deem the default defragmenter that comes with Windows to be insufficient. There are plenty of different solutions that try to out-do each other, some free and some paid. However, you can't just pick any free solution. You need to know which ones actually make a difference on your system.
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July 16, 2010
One of the most annoying things that can happen to your computer, especially if you’re the kind of person that installs and uninstalls software applications about as often as you change your clothes, is a drastic slowdown of your overall system performance. In this post I’m going to discuss two very useful and effective tools [...]
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October 26, 2009
It’s a common problem among computer users: after a few months, our computers become weighed down by programs and all sorts of other junk, and inevitably become sluggish. For the less tech-savvy users, this may induce thoughts like “Why is my computer so terrible?” or “I guess I could always upgrade this… what-cha-ma-callit RAM thing”. [...]
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October 7, 2009
Do you have a bad short term memory? Wait what were we talking about again? Oh right memory. Well I might have a horrible short term memory but the part of my brain that remembers DOS commands works great! So yours truly remembers all his DOS commands and I have to use them on a [...]
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May 6, 2009
I have been using Paragon tools for a while now. They make a pretty good defragmenter tool as well as a partition manager, Rescue software, Hard Drive Tools and Backup programs. None of which I have ever covered here on MakeUseOf.com for the simple fact that they cost money. We feature free products here and [...]
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December 7, 2008
There is no doubt, Microsoft is going to dominate the operating system market through Windows 7. Who knows where we will be after that. At that point we will likely be looking at some type of open source product, such as Ubuntu? Maybe even we’ll move to our smart phone(s) full time? Whatever the case, [...]
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October 30, 2008
A good defrag software that can clean your hard drives and optimize them for maximum performance is what every computer user needs. I’ve compiled a list of 8 great defragmenters, most of which I have used myself, and I’m pretty happy with the outcome. Diskeeper Diskeeper is one of my favorite defragmentation softwares out there. [...]
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October 22, 2008
All of the Windows Operating Systems, though great, usually require maintenance. Fortunately, it isn’t hard to keep your operating system in check with a few great tools and a little bit of tweaking. Today, I will be talking about this and how to have your operating system running as fast as ever. Let’s do it! [...]
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