windows 7

Speed up Windows XP, Vista, and 7

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , ,

I was looking for something else entirely when I found this PC World article: Speed Up Windows by Stripping it Down.

That’s a familiar concept. It includes several tips that apply to XP, Vista, and 7.
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Happy late birthday, OS/2

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Twenty-five years ago this month, on April 2, IBM announced its new PS/2 computers and a new multitasking operating system to run on (most of) them–OS/2. They even lured a bunch of the actors from M*A*S*H to do an ad campaign for them.

It didn’t seem like it at the time, but that was the beginning of the end of IBM’s PC business.
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Speeding up an Acer Aspire One 722

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

I gave my out-of-box impression of the Acer Aspire One 722 last week. It’s completely unacceptable out of the box, and adequate when you do some basic cleanup on it.

Now I’ve installed an Intel SSD in one and clean-installed Windows, and I’m much more impressed with it. Read more

Acer Aspire One 722 review

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I set up an Acer Aspire One 722 netbook this week. This is my Acer Aspire One 722 review. I imagine the return rates on these things is horrendous, because the out-of-box experience is pathetic.

This one won’t be going back though. Tune it up, and it’s an adequate performer. It’s still a netbook–all that talk of the AMD C-50 and C-60 chips delivering Celeron-like performance was just rumor–but it can match an Atom’s CPU performance and delivers better graphics performance than Intel. Read more

Move the print spool directory to your ramdisk

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , ,

You can improve the speed of printing slightly and, depending on the nature of your print jobs, dramatically reduce disk writes if you move the print spool directory to your ramdisk. It’s a little performance tweak you might have never heard of, but it’s helpful.

This trick works best with a ramdisk product that loads a disk image at startup, such as Dataram Ramdisk.

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Is TRIM better than Native Command Queuing?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Another question from the big bag ‘o search queries: When you’re shopping for an SSD, is TRIM better than Native Command Queuing?

It’s an interesting question, and my first inclination is to say no, because TRIM and NCQ solve two similar but distinctly different problems. But the more I think about it, the more I understand why it’s possible to confuse the two.

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No easy solutions to the .NET Framework

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

I had this discussion this week with longtime reader Jim `, which I present here in hopes of it being useful to someone. When I don’t have time to write well, maybe I can at least post something of a little use.

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Free space in c:\windows\installer

Dave Farquhar Windows ,

I found this trick yesterday for freeing up disk space on tight Windows 7 installs by using an automated tool to purge the C:\Windows\Installer directory. Windows 7 users with monster HDDs won’t have to worry about this, but if you’re running Windows 7 on a small SSD, you will.
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An easy way to change your power plans in Vista and Windows 7

Dave Farquhar Saving money, Windows , , , ,

If you need to change power plans to manage your computer’s power usage, here’s the easiest way to do it without fumbling around in control panel. This works in either Windows 7 or Vista.
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Microsoft’s leaked roadmap

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , , ,

Microsoft is getting aggressive with Windows release dates, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to put a damper on future sales.

Windows 8 is coming out in August, which was a poorly kept secret anyway. That can’t be helping Windows 7 sales, but at this point I think Microsoft is mostly concerned about new computer sales and corporate sales. What’s more concerning to me–initially–is the revelation that Windows 9 will be out in November 2014.
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