Speeding Up Your Computer, Pt. 1

Sep 6, 2011 by Linda Anderson

When your computer is slow, it’s a real drag. A real drag on your resources, that is.

Here’s one of the fastest and easiest ways to make it feel like it’s on the Indy 500 racetrack.

When your computer starts up, some programs start up with it. But because they are actually being loaded into your computer’s memory (RAM), you don’t see them until you need them. Software developers tend to make their software load into memory so whenever you need to open it, it’s already there waiting for you to use it, such as Skype.

Well, your computer needs that memory to run smoothly – and quickly. I’ll explain how to stop some of those automatic start-ups you don’t need. You can still use those programs, they will just take longer to open!

First, download Codestuff Starter. After you’ve got it up and running on your computer, click theStartups tab where you’ll see all the startup programs.

Next, in the lefthand column uncheck the programs you are sure you don’t need running in your memory. If you’re not sure of the program (or its necessity), enter its name in your search engine to learn more about it. If you uncheck it and later find out you need it, you can always come back to Codestuff Starter and re-initialize the program. Make sure to keep antivirus protection (and other anti-malware) software checked!

Get Codestuff Starter »

Handy Website

PadMapper.com is a site that’s called a mashup. A mashup pulls info from many sites across the Web and organizes and displays that info in a handy format. PadMapper does just that – it pulls apartment and housing listings and maps them on a Google map, so you get to see what’s available, according to your specifications, in your desired neighborhoods. You can display listings by rent amount, pets, number of bedrooms, and many other criteria.

Go to PadMapper »