I know that lots of people who read this blog like to have control over every aspect of their computer. That control is nice, because you can speed up your computer and make it perform the way you want it. Some articles that show this are 10 Quick Fixes to Make your Windows Computer Faster and Reduce Your PC Memory Usage With Minimem.
Those are great examples of articles to tweak your computer, and today, I’m going to cover SpeedFan, an application that puts you in control of all of the fans you have in your computer to keep it running cool.
Whenever an application stops responding, there are usually three options to get things back on track again. But first, how would you know if an application has hung? The three cardinal symptoms are the spinning beach ball, increased CPU usage and systemic unresponsiveness. If you’re experiencing any one of these, especially the infamous spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), you’ve definitely got an application that isn’t working the way it should.
So the first option when faced with a frozen or unresponsive application is to kill it. Not literally, of course! We can try to kill or “terminate” the program. The easiest way to do this is to simply right-click the application in the Dock and select ‘Force Quit’.
I started using widgets back when it was known as Konfabulator and Yahoo hadn’t meddled with it yet. I was still on my Windows XP laptop then and I tell you, it sure did give my RAM a hard time. When I switched to Mac, Dashboard came pre-installed and I took it for granted. Only when I remember the times I had back on my Windows laptop, I’m grateful that I’m using a Mac now.
For this is a tribute to Dashboard - Mac’s solution to Konfabulator.
I got my first (and only) Mac about a year ago and discovered I hated one of the major features that makes OS X different from Windows. I resented having to move my mouse so high, just to get at the file or edit menu way up there in the menu bar. I’ve since come to love the menu bar and I’ve recently begun experimenting with some small apps that sit there unobtrusively waiting for me to glance at them or access them — often with a hotkey.
I format my Mac once a year, either because it’s clunked up with old .plist files or because I just feel like performing a zero-out on my hard disk. One good thing about owning a Mac is never having to worry about installing drivers after reformatting. So that’s one problem avoided. Having a checklist of applications to install is quite handy to get my Mac up and running as quickly as possible. So, I’d like to share the applications I consider to be essential:
(1) NeoOffice
While going through most popular software stats on Download.com, I decided to pull out top 10 most downloaded FREE security AND Windows optimization programs. Not surprisingly, I ended up with 10 excellent FREE programs. Check them out below, most of them seem to be really good. (Note: Program popularity was measured by the total number of downloads during the last week)
TOP 5: Free Security Programs (Antivirus, Spyware Removal, etc.)
(1) AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition Memory-friendly free antivirus program that comes with lifetime free access to virus definition updates. Highlights include automatic update, real-time protection, free virus database updates, and some more. With nearly 1 mil. downloads (926,832) last week alone, this gotta be a good tool.
