One Tip A Day » update

20 No-Cost PC Upgrade Tips

Tony Williams — Mon, 21 May 2007 23:35:18 +0000

Techlogg.com is my site discovery of the week. One of the reasons I love blogs is that they allow normal people to share their knowledge and expertise with a large audience. One great post on Techlogg.com gives 20 no-cost PC upgrade tips.

Techlogg is correct in their assertion that many PCs are not running at their full capacity, and i’s not necessary to spend money to get a 20% increase when you could implement 20 tweaks that could potentially give a 1% increase each.

Here’s the list of tweaks they’ve come up with. Check out the site for the full guide.

1) Move the Windows system page file
2) Switch off XP’s fancy look
3) Use RAID 0 on your system
4) Starve integrated graphics of memory
5) Check the heatsink/fan combo
6) Check for dual-channel memory support
7) Clean your PC
8) Use aggressive CMOS settings
9) Adjust the front-side bus (FSB) speed
10) Look for multicore-enabled applications
11) Run fewer apps at the same time
12) Turn off hard drive power-down
13) If it’s charged, pull it out
14) Drop the screen resolution
15) Find faster video codecs
16) Get the latest device drivers
17) Patch your IDE drives
18) Defrag your hard drive
19) Get the latest motherboard BIOS updates
20) Reinstall Windows

How To Increase Your Internet Speed By 20%

Tony Williams — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:46:41 +0000

If you use Windows XP Professional then it is possible to squeeze an extra 20% out of your internet connection. By default Windows XP Pro holds back 20% of your Internet speed for various services like windows update and spyware checks.

If you want to tap into this locked speed then make the following changes:

Go to Start-> Run-> and type gpedit.msc
Expand the Administrative Templates branch
Expand the Network tab
Highlight QoS Packet Scheduler
Click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth and check the ‘enabled’ box
Then Change the Bandwidth limit % to 0 %

Once you’ve done this click apply and restart your PC. After rebooting you should see a noticeable improvement in your net speed.

Thanks to the Techie Blog for the tip.

Optimize Windows Vista With TweakVI

Tony Williams — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:40:02 +0000

TweakVI is a freeware program that claims to be the first to both both tweak and optimize Windows Vista. The free Basic version of TweakVI comes with 13 plugins that perform various functions. Other plugins are available, but they have to be paid for.

The TweakVI feature I like the sound of the most is the settings transfer, which allows you to transfer your Vista tweaks between machines, which will be handy if you building a new machine or even just rebuilding your current one.

Other Key features of TweakVI include:

Activate hundreds of hidden Windows Vista settings
clean your registry
activate system and software restrictions
display detailed system information
create a 256MB RAM drive
protect your privacy
clean your harddrive
manage TrueType fonts
improve your internet connection
optimize your CPU
optimize your RAM
manage system updates

To try out TweakVI click here

Automatically Update Your Software With Update Checker

Tony Williams — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:22:06 +0000

About 10 years ago CNET used to provide a great service that would tell you when updated versions of the programs running on your PC were available.

The service was sadly discontinued I think for legal reasons, but now there’s an even better service from File Hippo called Update Checker.

This free program scans your PC to see what programs you have installed, and then Update Checker will tell you if there are any updated versions available and asks you whether you want to download it or not. In most instances you should say yes, as normally new versions of programs include bug fixes and new functionality.