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Saturday, 7 August 2010

How Your Computer Looks Might Be To Blame For It Running Slow

By Gary Foster

Once of the biggest reasons as to why your computer runs slow has to do with your computer being setup to "look pretty". A lot of your computers resources are being used to make the interface look good and if you were to tune these down, then your computer might be able to run a bit faster.

Yes, it's a trade off: looks or performance. But in all honesty, which would you rather have? A computer that looks good that for the most part only YOU look at or a computer that functions well and does more of what you want it to do? The answer seems pretty obvious to me, so here is how to tune down your computers looks:

For those Windows XP users out there just click Start right click on My Computer and select Properties. Now select the Advanced tab and on the area where it says "Performance", double click Settings. Now, in the Visual Effects tab a tthe top of the screen select Adjust For Best Performance. See, what you are now doing is forcing Windows XP to look more like Windows 98. For those of you what would like your computer to look somewhat good and still be tuned for performance just select the Custom box, make sure that all of the other boxes are selected and scroll down to the bottom. Now just select "Use Visual Styles On Windows And Buttons". All you have to do now is just select Apply and then OK.

If you are running Windows Vista just start by clicking Start in the left hand corner of your screen, right click on Computer and selecting the Properties option. On the left hand side, select the Advanced System Settings. In the advanced tab where it says Performance double click on the Settings button. Now in the Visual Effects tab, select Adjust For Best Performance. This will make your Windows Vista look more like Windows 98, but it will be faster. If you would like to keep the way that your Vista looks, and still have your computers fixed to go faster select the Custom box, make sure that everything is checked off and then select the box that says "Use Visual Styles On Windows And Buttons". Click Apply and then OK.

So how much of a performance boost should you expect? Well that varies greatly. I have used this technique on a lot of slow computers and what I have realized is that some of them will be a lot faster and others you might not even notice that there was a difference. For the most part, you really aren't loosing anything by trying this "tune up" out so you might as well give it a shot. If you don't like the way that your computer look after doing this, then just change it back to the way that it was before you started to make changes.

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