Mobile Devices, PDAs, Phones and Gadgets

If you have switched over from XP to Vista you surly will have known by now that Vista is much slower. This lack of speed has to do with Vista dedicating a lot of its resources to trying to “look pretty”. Making the operating system look nice is great and all but when it comes time to actually get some work done it can be a huge problem. In this article I am going to show you two quick ways to make your Vista perform a it faster but you are going to have to be willing to sacrifice some of Vistas looks in order to get more function. Keep in mind that there really is no point in having your computer look really nice since you are the only person that is really going to be seeing it.

If you are using the Home Premium, Enterprise, Business or Ultimate more likely than not you have the Aero effect turned on. This effect is designed to make your computers windows have a glass like effect that looks cool. It also allows you to have Windows Flip 3D which is just a fancy version of the Alt + Tab combination which allows you to cycle through your currently opened programs. If your not sure what the Flip 3D is, just open a few programs, hold down the Windows Button and press the Tab key a few times – that’s Windows Flip 3D. Now hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key a few times – that’s the old way of cycling through your programs. Here’s how to get rid of the Aero effect:

Click Start, click on Control Panel and on the left hand side make sure that the Control Panel Home is selected. Click on Appearance and Personalize, click on Personalize, click on Windows Color and Appearance and at the bottom select “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”. Now in this new window under the Color Scheme drop down box select Windows Vista Basic. Click Apply and then OK. This should turn off the Aero effect.

One of the biggest features that Vista has that is pretty much useless is the sidebar. Unless you are actually using the Windows gadgets on the sidebar regularly then its probably best that you get rid of it. It literally serves no purpose to the average user except to make your computers desktop look nice. Here’s the process:Right click on the windows sidebar icon in the System Tray and select the properties option from the drop down menu ( if your not sure what the system tray is, its that little group of icons in the bottom right hand corner). Now, in the Windows Sidebar Properties dialog box uncheck the box that says “Start Sidebar when Windows Starts” and select Apply and then OK. Now just right click on the Windows Sidebar Icon in the system tray again and select Exit.

By doing both of these things you have now given yourself some more resources to use which in the long run will make your computer faster.

mobile computing

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Why is your computer slow? Well the answer to that question is beyond the scope of this text but I will tell you that it has to do with your computer building up junk in many different areas in time. The more of these areas that you clean up the faster your computer will be – it’s that simple. Take a look at registry cleaners – they are designed to clean up all of the junk and inefficiencies that build up in your registry to make it faster. The only problem with registry cleaners is that they focus on one area of your computer which will only give you so much of an advantage while there are many different areas of your computer that need to be cleaned. This is why using registry cleaners really aren’t a complete solution to making your computer faster – they only clean one small area while there are many different areas that need to be either cleaned or tuned for performance.

Your computer operating system uses RAM as a temporary working area for files and programs but sometimes those files that are being used in RAM are going to also need a temporary working area. This new temporary working area is a folder on your hard drive called the Temp folder. When your files in your RAM are done using the Temp folder Windows will automatically delete everything in that folder. The issue happens when your computer freezes, hangs or you end a program. All of the files that were in the Temp folder are still in there and they haven’t been deleted. This may not sound like much but after time these files can add up to a lot and start to slow your computer down. Here is how you get rid of them:

For those of you that are using Windows XP start off by simply closing all of your running files and programs and then clicking on the Start button. next, click on Run and type %Temp% in the little box that appears and then hit the enter button. Whats going to happen now is that you’re going to get another window that will show you what’s in the Temp folder. All you have to do now is to just delete everything that you can in that folder. If for what ever reason it says that you cannot delete a certain file, just skip it and then just move onto the next file.

For those of you that are currently using Windows Vista, close all of your running programs and files, click Start in the left hand corner of your screen and type Run in the start menu search box. A small Run window should comes up now. Just type %Temp% and hit enter. Now what you are going to want to do is to delete everything that you see in that folder. If there are some files that you cannot delete that are in that folder, then just ignore them and move onto the next one.

By cleaning up your Temp folder regularly you are first freeing up your computer of hard drive space which will make it run faster in the long run (it will have less files that it will have to manage) and your computer will also have less internal errors.

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Why should you be worried about spyware? That’s actually a really good question. See, spyware is a form of malware that is used to log information on someone without them knowing. Some of the most common things that are logged are things like usernames, passwords, credit card information and even bank account information. Malware is software that is also installed on a users computer without them knowing but is designed to damage your computer (this is why the mal in malware stands for malicious). Since spyware is a piece of software that runs in the background of your computer, it will take up your computers resources and this leads to it slowing down your computer.

Overall the point that I’m trying to make here is that spyware is bad and you should be protecting yourself against it at all costs. I personally use two different pieces of software to protect myself against spyware. One prevents spyware from ever getting into my computer and another is used to find and remove spyware that already on my computer. I suggest using both as you will get a much better level of protection.

The first is called MalwareBytes Anti Malware and is a free program. Once you have installed it on your computer perform a full scan to fully scan your hard drive. I highly recommend doing this as it will go through each and every single file on your computer individually to make sure that it is not infected. Once a full scan is done and you plan on doing another scan in the future, quick scan will be sufficient. There is only one downside to using the free version of this software- you have to manually update it by clicking on the update button. If you are interested just do a Google search for them.

The second piece of software that I use is called Spyware Blaster. This is the program that I use to protect my computer by preventing malware and spyware from getting in. Notice the difference here: one program is used to scan and eliminate malware/spyware and the other tries to prevent it from ever coming in. Just download and install the program and it will provide you with full protection. With this program you are also going to have to manually update it, but hey its a lot better than paying for it.

What most people don’t know that is that if your computer is infected with spyware it can drastically slow down your computer. This is why it is critical that you take care of your computers health as much as possible.

mobile computing

computers, internet, mobile computing, Network, operating system, printers, programming, security, software, telecommunications, web, web design, web development, wireless