Practicing the Black Art (02/08)
All Computers Wait At The Same Speed
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
I first heard that phrase about ten years ago at a geek
conference in
Seattle. A decade ago is earlier than the Stone Age in computer
years. It was probably meant to make fun of the propeller heads that
couldn’t live without the fasted CPU on their motherboard. The geeks’
concern with processing speed seemed ridiculous to those who understood that
computers spend very little of their time processing information. They spend
it waiting for us to tell them to do something. You would certainly
find your life very boring if you had to spend 99% of your time waiting for
other people to act before you could do anything.
What are we talking about? We’re talking about keeping
your system properly tuned so that you don’t have to wait while it tries to
do its job. It’s no secret that Vista has had performance problems.
Microsoft has promised that their upcoming service pack should resolve most
if not all performance issues. We’ve heard similar kinds of promises from
Redmond before, but this time they say they really mean it. In fairness, not
every performance issue can be laid at Microsoft’s doorstep, but it’s always
fun to blame them because they’re such an easy target.
Vista puts great demands on your CPU due to Aero and
other assorted graphical gizmos built into the product. They should have
named it the Eye Candy OS. Responding to the user community, Microsoft also
added security features and additional functions that were not present in
XP. When you ask your CPU to do more, you’re adding overhead. This means you
need more CPU power or you live with a slower system. If Vista performance
has been less than stellar, the good news is that you can do something about
it other than buying a new computer. Here are some of the things you can do
to make Vista more appealing from a performance standpoint.
You’re probably tired of hearing this one. It’s like
mother telling you to eat your vegetables. You know she’s right, but you
don’t want to hear it. ADD MORE MEMORY. Vista is hungrier for RAM
than any of its predecessors, and with memory as cheap as it is, it doesn’t
make sense to keep it on a starvation diet. XP runs great on one gigabyte of
RAM. Vista should have two gigabytes as a minimum, and you won’t go wrong by
installing even four gigabytes.
Even with enough physical memory, Vista can still act
like a tired old dog if you have a lightweight video card. Go into the
Performance Information and Tools utility in Control Panel, and check out
your video card with the Windows Experience Index. You need a video card
that’s certified for Vista Premium and supports Direct X 10. Use the money
you save on RAM to buy a good video card. Don’t try to do this one on the
cheap.
A real help to good performance is bringing your power
settings to the High Performance option. Do this from the Power Options
utility in Control Panel. The default setting is Balanced which is OK for XP
but not Vista. The High Performance setting gives you full access to all the
Power in the CPU.
Turn off the sidebar. While this feature is visually
appealing, it has few socially redeeming traits. Turning off this feature
can sometimes result in significantly faster startups and shutdowns. Disable
the sidebar by right-clicking it. Select Properties, and remove the
checkmark in the box that starts the sidebar when Vista wakes up.
Fine tune your indexing options. Vista has a great search
feature, but it’s totally dependent on indexing the files and programs on
your hard drive. It’s a mixed blessing. You have a fantastic search
capability when you index all locations, but you take a performance hit. By
indexing fewer areas, performance will improve, but your search feature will
be less robust.
Vista won’t let you turn off indexing completely, but you
can disable indexing for locations that may not be important to you. Do this
from the Performance Information and Tools utility in Control Panel.
Here’s another "eat your veggies" type tip. Empty the
Recycle Bin and adjust it so it doesn’t take up more than 2% of your hard
drive. Right click on the Recycle Bin, select Properties, and make the
necessary adjustments in the dialog box. Don’t forget to defrag your disk
once in a while, and empty the Recycle Bin before you defrag, not after.
Open My Computer from the Desktop. Right click on the C:
drive, select Properties and check how much space you have left on your hard
drive. If you’re approaching 90% or more, you need to take non-essential
files and move them to another location. Vista needs free disk space to
perform certain housekeeping functions, and if it has to hunt around for
room or use virtual memory, your performance hit could be enormous.
Keep your device drivers up-to-date. Device drivers were
designed to ensure that programs or hardware peripherals could "talk" to the
system without problems and do their jobs properly. Newer drivers can
improve 3D performance, fix bugs and other graphical glitches in games and
video programs. Device drivers can avoid memory conflicts and prevent
programs from squabbling over resources. Newer device drivers can support
innovative features within applications, and ensure compatibility among
different programs.
These are only some of the things you can do to improve Vista
performance. Removing unnecessary startup programs, preventing spyware and
virus infections, and updating old software are additional steps you can
take. If your system is frequently hanging up or crashing after doing
everything you can do to improve performance, then it’s time to consider
reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling everything, but that’s another
article.
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Copyright 2008. This article is from the February 2008 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
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