Computer Advice

Windows Vista definitely wasn’t going to win any awards from the thousands of computer users who were experiencing critical problems with the new operating system. The negative feedback sent Microsoft into an immediate counter attack and the result of their efforts to create something better, something far more reliable and toned down resulted in Windows 7.

Windows Vista had incredibly demanding specifications that required decent graphics cards, heavy amounts of ram, strong CPU’s and other hardware components that a lot of computers are lacking. Fortunately, Windows 7 improved upon these complex system requirements and toned down the operating system to allow older computers to get in on the new exciting features. In fact, some consumers have reported running Windows 7 on PC’s with as little as 512MB of RAM. While this is obviously not recommended as Microsoft clearly has suggested at least 1GB of RAM, it does provide some evidence that they effectively made a reliable operating system that can function with lower standard materials. Some of the reports suggesting that Windows 7 ran fine on 512MB also stated that it seemed to over perform Windows XP. Windows XP was released quite some time ago and the fact that computers designed for XP can run more smoothly with Windows 7 is extraordinary.

Windows Vista also had several technological difficulties that disallowed users from accessing certain points within the operating system. These challenges have been overcome since the introduction of Windows 7. While Windows 7 still limits your access to certain parts of the computer, warning you if you’re about to enter a secured location, these capabilities are necessary to prevent basic computer users from altering files they shouldn’t be. Secondly, Windows 7 took away the unfortunate administration issues that Vista was facing. Many users reported software problems when attempting to launch programs as a regular user, rather than as an administrator.

Computer Games have always been regarded as primarily being used for Windows operating systems. However, in recent years Mac has been working incredibly hard to make arrangements with some of the top game developers in the industry. The very fortunate results have amounted to thousands of games being revitalized for Mac machines. Now gamers have come to enjoy some of their favorite games like Defense Grid, Toy Story, Team Fortress 2 and so much more. Even more complex games that are sold through the online game engine and most renowned game distributor Steam, are being offered for Macintosh computers. Steam has become increasingly popular for distributing games on the Internet that let gamers digitally download and have access to the games within minutes. Now, with these new improvements they will be able to offer Mac users a way to get their favorite PC games as well.

However, these new additions in the gaming industry didn’t come easy for Apple, the developers behind the Mac. In fact, they had to contact the best game developers for computer games in order to work out exceptions for their computers. It’s clear for game developers that this will open up a new, profitable venture. Future sales for their games would amount to greater heights because of the increased exposure on Macintosh machines. The downside of the situation is that there will need to be two versions of the game made during production. For updates and releases, a similar situation would arise. Ultimately the new addition means a lot more work for game developers but they are hopefully that it will amount to more sales, more fans and more gamers down the line.

Team Fortress 2 was undoubtedly one of the biggest game additions for Macintosh. TF2 is incredibly popular amongst gamers; it’s often regarded as the replacement for Counter-strike and Day-of-Defeat which were also made by Valve. Mac has released several statements that such they will continue to create more partnerships and agreements with game developers so that their systems can become more flexible and more reliable for consumers. Some of their hottest selling games right now are The Sims 3, Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Valve’s games like TF2 and Brothers in Arms. Apple has done a exceptional job at incorporating the agreements and new games for their operating systems. Apple computers have been recognized amongst technically savvy computer years to lack in flexibility and functionality but overachieve in software and development tools. Perhaps the new additions will also shed new light on the company, bringing them huge success in the computer industry like they’ve experienced with their gadgets, the iPad, iPhone and iTouch.

Aside from using CCleaner to improve your computer and Internet speeds, running disk defragment can be an excellent accomplice to those tools. Disk defragment tools like Defraggler, which was developed by the same company as CCleaner, were designed to improve upon your hard drive and make opening files, software and other programs and applications quicker and more efficient than it’s optimized for at the moment. If you’ve been using your hard drive to store files and programs for many months or possibly even years then you’re well beyond ready to use Defraggler. If your computer is fairly new and you’ve only been using it for a few weeks, using Defraggler is not necessary.

Disk defragment works by rearranging the files that are stored on your hard drive. Essentially, when you save a file that file isn’t always saved in the same location. Rather, the file Is separated and divided in various sections on your hard drive. When you open that file or program your hard drive then has to perform a complex search to locate all of the missing pieces in order to correctly have the entire collection of files. The more that you store on your hard drive, the more unorganized things become. Eventually your operating system files can become fragmented and all of your software will be divided on the hard drive as well. The importance of using Defraggler to realign these files is very evident. The process can take several minutes and sometimes even hours but upon its conclusion it should greatly improve on your computers functionality. Once the defragment tool has finished you will have all of your files, folders and software organized and neatly aligned within the segments of your hard drive. You should notice greater speeds and superior access within you files and programs immediately. Remember that using Defraggler is highly recommended but it should only be completed about once every few months.

You can improve upon the results of these tools by running your anti-virus software prior to using CCleaner or Defraggler. Viruses amount for many of the reported problems in computers and by simply running a thorough search for infections, bugs and viruses you can eliminate them as a possibility for your unfortunate computer speed issues.

Before you consider the possible hardware upgrades that you can make to your computer to improve its functionality and make it run faster, you should always consider the software that’s available. Software provides an easy to use interface that’s designed to accomplish many things on your company. Of course, there are many types of software that specialize in different aspects of computing. However, only a select few of them can provide exceptionally pleasing results when it comes to speeding up your computer and making it run faster. In fact, the most powerful software on the Internet for speeding up your computer is provided free of charge. It’s amazing that there are products and compute repair companies charging hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars for services that you could perform on your own. Many computer owners don’t recognize how capable they are of using free software to accomplish these goals. In reality, any computer technician or computer repair service company is probably going to use these very tools or very similar tools to provide you with the same quality results.

CCleaner is a computer software tool that was designed several years ago to improve upon registry file buildup and temporary Internet file buildup. Most of us use computers because we enjoy surfing the Internet and browsing all of the features and capabilities that the Internet provides. Unfortunately, if you don’t know how to effectively clean out your temporary files and other file buildups that compile when you use the Internet consistently then you probably are suffering from slow computing speeds because of the excess files. Whatever Internet browser you’re using doesn’t make a difference in the process. Whether you have Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or any other software, CCleaner will essentially remove all of the file buildup involved in using the Internet. Secondly, CCLeaner also allows you to remove corrupted registry files that might be slowing down your computer. The convenience of CCleaner’s in house program deletion tool and automatic startup changer is very welcoming. If you have unwanted software installed you can easily remove it as well as change preferences like boot options and startup options without having to access complex areas within your operating system.

Just recently I came across a virus while browsing the Internet. It was one of those moments where I didn’t ever think it would happen to me, but it did. I had anti-virus software running and it didn’t even hesitate when it hacked in and infected my computer within a matter of seconds. It was a rather simple virus, not very complex so essentially I got off fairly lucky. I immediately used my secondary computer to research what type of virus it was and how to remove it. The virus had a fake anti-virus screen that would repeatedly pop-up notifying me that my anti-virus was out of date and I needed to immediately upgrade. The virus appeared to be created for the intention of stealing people’s money by tricking them into believing that their computer was at risk and needed software updates.

Fortunately, it wasn’t very difficult to get the virus removed. In fact, all I had to do was shut down my computer and reboot. During the startup process you instruct Windows to restore to a previous state using the handy “Windows Restore” option. Usually when Windows detects that there’s a problem it will present this option for you. If you can’t find it you can access the BIOS and find your boot options. Here, you will be able to tell Windows that you need to restore your files. Now this was all that I had to do, but it might not work for everyone. If you’ve been infected by a virus, try to find the name of the virus. Typically viruses have a purpose like for instance, the virus I encountered was designed to steal money. It had a name called “AV Security Suite.” By searching this name I was able to find easy remove options from my secondary computer and those can come in handy if you’re unable to solve the problem on your own.

The lesson to be learned from the virus that my anti-virus was unable to detect is to always be aware. Make sure you have decent anti-virus software and it’s enabled and always activated for Internet browsing detection. I have a free anti-virus known as AVG which has been highly regarded in the computer industry. However, it was unable to perform like it should during this instance, perhaps upgrading to a more sustainable anti-virus would be more efficient. Always remember to double check the website you’re on. I was using a forum and browsing websites that were being sold. One of the sellers allegedly had this virus activated on his website. To ensure it doesn’t happen again, I won’t be viewing very many untrustworthy websites.

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding computer hardware and what actually works to speed up your computer and provide promising results. However, most of the confusion resides around the various computer software applications that claim they can provide similar improvements. However, as a computer technician, such claims are completely unjustified and can instantly be ruled out. Software that claims it can speed up your computer can only function to an extent. In reality, there is only so much that software can accomplish, once it has reached its maximum capabilities, it’s likely that your computer will still be running at its same, slow speeds. In fact, there’s actually more that you can do yourself to improve upon your computer speeds with free software that’s available on the Internet.

If you’ve tried some of the free tools like CCleaner and Disk Defraggler, as well as running your anti-virus software and you haven’t seen any improvements, the next step is to purchase computer hardware. Inside your computer you have several main components. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a computer then you might think it looked rather technical, however it’s really not very complicated at all. The main part to a computer is the motherboard. Essentially, the motherboard is what all of the other parts in the computer connect to. Connecting to the motherboard you have the power supply that provides power to the computer, the hard drive, CD Drive, RAM, Processor or CPU and any custom modifications you’ve made to your machine. You can pretty quickly distinguish which of these components actually provide importance in the functionality of your computers speed. The hard drive provides space for you to store your files, the CD drive allows you to insert disks that will operate on the computer, and the processor and RAM work together to improve the functionality of running programs and opening files. Typically, if you have a slow processor or not enough RAM installed in your computer then it will suffer from unrecoverable slow speeds. There’s no software on the market that can improve upon the speed of your computer if the hardware is what’s at fault. If your processor is not dual core, it’s recommended that you upgrade to a dual core processor with at least 2.0 GHZ. Secondly, if you don’t have a minimum of 1GB of RAM then you should consider upgrading. Even with 1GB of RAM your computer might still suffer from operation issues and you could try installing up to 2.0GB for better performance.