Tips for better computing.

[Tareth Thorn]

Because every bit of bandwidth and every cycle of computer resource is precious, I offer the following public service announcement.

Do you know what your computer is running? Most people don't. Using a dialup connection can be painfully slow enough without half of your communication pipeline being used by programs you don't even know exist on your computer. So can your system lag because sixteen different pieces of marketing software are recording and logging every keystroke of your keyboard.

These programs are embedded in sneaky ways to get into your computer through things that may seem harmless, like a browser cookie or a plug-in application. In reality, it's highly unlikely that you want them there, taking up your space and time.

I suggest the following:

When surfing, use a popup blocker. There are many on the market, my personal favorite is the Google Toolbar, since I use Google extensively anyway. It's free and works well.

Check your cookie settings. For those with Internet Explorer as your default browser, they can be found under Tools>Internet Options>Privacy. This should be set to medium at the lowest for the best security. Higher settings require more maintenance, but offer greater security.

Run anti-adware software on a regular basis. Again, there are many to choose from, my personal one of choice is Ad-Aware SE, again because it's free and works extremely well.

Defrag your hard drive on a monthly basis. You'd be surprised how fast things can get messy in there, how much performance you can regain, and how many problems it can repair or catch in early stages on what I'm sure most of us would call our most valuable piece of computer hardware.

For those with more advanced tastes, examine the processes running on your system. It's unlikely that you need Weatherbug, four search toolbars, the monitoring software to a digital camera you sold last year, etc running in the background. You can easily do a websearch on all the process names displayed when you Ctrl-Alt-Del to find out which are necessary and which are not.

If you're into the health of your PC, I would also suggest Iolo's System Mechanic, a suite of tools that is very good at keeping Windows in good shape. It includes all of the above things in addition to many other good resources, but it does cost about $60. The money is well worth the performance.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain that if you're reading this, your internet connection and your computer are pretty valuable to you. Treat them well. Like a car needs oil changed, tires rotated, and other basic routine regular maintenance, so does your PC. Neglecting it makes it sad, which makes you do a lot of finger-drumming while waiting for things to load.

[Skyler]

Tareth -- thank you for this post. Though everything you posted I currently know, I wouldn't know them if it weren't for you. Years ago, when my knowledge of computers was about equivalent to my knowledge of the composite valve rotation of a nuclear submarine, I put up a help post on a message board and you came to my rescue. No one else offered any helpful advice except for you. To this day I still make regular use of the information you provided in your reply. (You remember? How to go into DOS and delete those phantom temporary internet files that won't show up in windows because Microsoft is keeping tabs on you?) Anyways, after that, I became much more interested and aware of the things my machine was doing behind the scenes. Now my computer maintenance is a regular chore, just like getting my oil changed and taking out the trash.

Hats off to you, sir.

[Goldglo]

Ad-Aware 4 teh win!

I'm shocked sometimes at how much ad stuff people have on their computers. Hell, even after a couple days of regular surfing, I'll have a crapload. Love that proggie

[Tareth Thorn]

Thanks Skyler, ya made my day.

One of the biggest reasons for this post is that we've noticed over the course of testing that the new chats will be a little more system-intensive than running AIM. The connection will be much more stable and we'll have many more goodies, but the resource requirements will be about the equvalent of running a full modern AOL client. For some, AOL is still their default ISP, so running both the AOL and Flashchat will use a good portion of resources. These tips are designed to free up as much power as possible so that things run smoothly.

[Elijah]

Yay! I am not out of touch even though I've been out of the techy business for almost 4 years! I might just add a little to Tareth's recommendations.

Whenever I buy a new computer, I automatically reformat the harddrive, and then install only programs I want, and not all the crap that Gateway, Dell, Sony, etc try to put on new systems to get you to download and buy other software. They put so much extra crap on new computers that is all tied in together now it is obnoxious.

In short, if you start with a clean system you know you put together with only the programs you want, with the configurations you want, then it is a great place to start in doing a lot of what Tareth talks about. Google is a great pop-up blocker, I've been on cable modemn for about 6 months now with Google as my homepage and a lot of their plugins installed, and I have not seen a pop-up in the entire time I have been on cable modemn since installing the Google stuff 6 months ago.

If you find your system having issues a lot, and you download a lot of things or doing a lot of file sharing, that is going to be the main source of why you are having problems 99.99% of the time.

[Melgarth]

One word: Firefox

Great browser instead of Internet Explorer, and includes a pop up blocker and gives you the ability to have multiple web pages up in tabs, instead of multiple IE's on the taskbar at the bottom. (Especially useful when you have Windows XP, and it shows IE with a 5 next to it for the 5 different IE windows you have open.) You also don't have to worry as much about spyware and adware.