As a tech writer, one of my biggest pet peeves is the plethora of bad advice littered across almost every web site dedicated to system tweaking. Besides the tweaks that simply don’t work, some of them will actually cause your computer to run even slower—or worse.
In my latest article on Lifehacker, I examined some of the most offensive myths out there regarding PC performance tweaking, and debunk them once and for all:
- Disabling QoS to Free Up 20% of Bandwidth
- Make Vista Use Multiple Cores to Speed Up Boot Time
- Clearing Out Windows Prefetch for Faster Startup
- Cleaning the Registry Improves Performance
- Clear Memory by Processing Idle Tasks
- Clean, Defrag and Boost Your RAM With SnakeOil Memory Optimizer
- Disabling Shadow Copy/System Restore Improves Performance
- Enable SuperFetch in Windows XP
- Disabling Services to Speed Up the Computer
If you are a system tweaker, I absolutely recommend reading through the article.
Debunking Common Windows Performance Tweaking Myths – lifehacker.com
In case you missed some of my other posts over there, you can also read them here:
- Smart and Easy Ways to Reduce Printing Costs
- Closing Microsoft Office’s Annoying Clipboard Bar
- Save Time and Typing with Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts
- How to Make Windows Vista Less Annoying
Note that I’m only writing part-time over there, and all of you, my awesome subscribers, still come first.
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As a tech writer, one of my biggest pet peeves is the plethora of bad advice littered across almost every web site dedicated to system tweaking. Besides the tweaks that simply don’t work, some of them will actually cause your computer to run even slower—or worse.