#1 Stop the Indexing Service – Windows like to index every file on your system for faster searching through Explorer, however whenever I’ve talked to people about this they overwhelmingly tell me that they never (or rarely) use the search feature in Explorer, so there’s really no reason to allow Indexing to run.

It takes up memory and CPU resources in the background, as well as disk space on your hard drive–so shutting this down will give a performance boost to your normal computing use.

To turn it off simply Right click on your hard drive from within Explorer and select the Properties option. At the bottom of the informational pop-up you will see a check box labeled “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”

Make sure that’s unchecked and press the “Apply” button. Make sure to apply the changes to all files and folders on the drive.

#2 Minimize Windows Animation Effects – Windows XP offers lots of neat animation and graphics effects, however these come at a cost to performance. If your machine is slow or sluggish you can get a boost by turning these off.

Simply Right click anywhere on your Desktop and select “Properties”.

Select the “Appearance” tab and press the “Effects” button.

In the pop-up settings screen, you can uncheck everything, or just some effects as you desire, then press “Okay”, and then press “Apply”.

#3 Defragment Your Hard Drive – Either using the Windows Defragger tool or some 3rd party Defragger, you should defragment your hard drive at least once per month, I do it once per week, to keep your disk optimized and running faster–which means your whole system runs faster.

I use the free tool Auslogics Disk Defrag because it seems to be faster and stronger than the default Windows Defragger tool.

#4 Clean Your Registry – over time your Windows registry will become cluttered with bad, outdated and unnecessary entries, so cleaning these out will speed up registry reading and access which helps to improve overall performance.

You DO NOT want to start messing around in the Registry file on your own, one wrong move can crash your system and prevent it from booting up again. Fortunately, there are good, free tools available to help with this process.

What I use is CCleaner, and I always make sure to take advantage of the option to make a backup of your registry before every cleaning. I tend to test a lot of software, which means lots of installations and uninstalls on my computer, so I run CCleaner every week, but running it once per month is probably enough for most users.

#5 Lower Your Color Depth – Most people will never notice a difference between running their monitors at 16-bit or higher color depths, but the higher the color depth setting the more resources your display are using, so by lowering the setting to 16-bit or even 24-bit will provide a small boost to your system.

To change this setting simply Right click anywhere on your Desktop and select “Properties”.

Select the “Settings” tab and under Color Quality use the drop-down listing to reduce your color depth setting, then click “Apply”.

#6 Clean Up That Disk Clutter – before running your monthly (or weekly) Disk Defragmentation, run the Disk Cleanup tool on your hard drive to remove unnecessary or unwanted files that can get left behind by programs and build up over time.

To run this just open Explorer and Right click on your main hard drive then select “Properties”.

In the pop-up screen you will see the Disk Cleanup button, press it and follow the on-screen directions. After it completes is an optimal time to run your Disk Defragger.

#7 Clean Up Your Desktop – while it may seem convenient to keep icons for every program and file on your computer right there on the Desktop, the fact is the more icons you have on the Desktop the slower your Desktop will load and respond to your actions.

Windows has an easy Start Menu that you can organize to best suit your needs, as well as a Quick Launch toolbar for your most used programs, these are the places that your program icons should be rather than on the Desktop.

For files, if you don’t want to use the My Documents features to keep your files organized, then just creating a single new folder on your Desktop and dumping all of your individual files into it will make a difference. The bottom line is you don’t want a bunch of icons and files sitting on your Desktop if you’re concerned with performance.

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There’s a lot more users can do to improve their PC performance, but I wanted to start with 7 and if this is helpful to readers I will write additional follow-ups with even more tips.

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Technorati Tags: Disk Cleanup, Windows Registry, Windows XP

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The bottom line with these threats is that while a majority can be cleaned or removed from your system after infection, that doesn’t mean they didn’t do great harm before you found them, so the best thing to do is take every step possible to prevent them from getting on your PC in the first place.

This means having a good Firewall and AntiVirus setup on your machine, and allowing them to update your protections daily. This usually runs in the background and won’t interfere with what you’re doing on the computer.

There are free options for both available, as well as affordable commercial titles too. We prefer one of the commercial products out there simply because they seem to update against the latest threats a little faster than the free options do, and the level of support you can expect when paying for software is usually higher.

Still, if you can’t afford a few dollars for one of the commercial firewall and antivirus products then at the very least use the free options… just get your PC protected.

Technorati Tags: antivirus, firewall, malware, spyware

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Jayel Gibson, author and adjunct professor at Southwestern Oregon Community College says “Gaming has enormous potential as a teaching tool”, and we couldn’t agree more.

Today’s teens and younger children are tech-oriented. Studies have shown that information is often better consumed in chunks, which is in-line with how computer and gaming devices present data.

Think of your favorite news network, whether it’s CNN or FOX you always see the anchor on-screen giving the story, with a related image over their shoulder, a bold related headline across their chest and a scroll-ticker along the bottom giving the latest unrelated news headlines.

For many adults all of this information presented in this manner can be distracting, but for a lot of adults and most younger people today that’s how we consume information. It feels natural for us, and we get more faster because of it.

If this can be applied to learning educators could easily double or even triple the yearly curriculum for their courses with the potential of also increasing comprehension and retention rates with students.

Technorati Tags: education, games, learning

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Basically, VINE is a free service that allows victims of crime and concerned citizens to receive real-time information on the custody status of offenders in prison. People may also register to be notified when an offender is transferred, released or escapes.

Unfortunately, to date VINE has only been able to monitor about 75% of the incarcerated offenders in America. This has been because many smaller facilities lacked the technical infrastructure or resources required for the VINE system to communicate with them.

This is where the partnership between Appriss Inc. and Digital Solutions Inc. comes in. Digital Solutions provides a low-cost, web based and secure Offender Management System that even the smallest jails can implement, thus connecting them to the VINE system and affords the opportunity to provide a complete blanket of information coverage for victims of crime and communities.

Technorati Tags: crime, victims, vine

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That’s awesome!

I know that if you look at the numbers there isn’t a greater risk from predators to children online than there is in the real world, heck I’ve even supported that argument in fighting against dumb and censoring legislation attempts, but I also think that just because the risk isn’t higher that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge it at all, or that we can’t take smart steps toward reducing it further.

Education is the perfect way to combat risk. That’s true with most things. The majority of people who have problems or end up in dangerous situations do so because they were unaware.

If you walk into an unknown situation, and you’re unaware of the dangers and consequences inherent to that situation, you’re bound to end up in trouble.

And since children are getting online at very early ages, and spending more time online as a whole with each passing month, giving them sound guidance and understanding of the environment is not only practical but seems like the moral thing to do if you care at all about kids.

I also read that Texas and Illinois are planning to start similar classes soon too. It’s a sad day (for this Yankee) when Texas is on the leading edge so I hope the rest of the country will begin adopting this common sense approach very soon. Let’s all put that “To Catch A Predator” show off the air by removing the easy victims.

SPECIAL NOTE: I actually love Texas, just poking fun at friends and family I have there with my comments

Technorati Tags: online safety

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That may seem overwhelming to some, but the good news is that 2 steps is all it takes to protect your PC and personal information, how much easier can it be?

1) Install preventative software. There are high quality spyware remover, adware removal, anti-virus and firewall programs out there for just a few dollars. Going online without them is like drunk driving, it will eventually end badly for you.

You risk your PC, personal data and even your identity if you surf the web without spyware, adware and anti-virus software running on your system, and there are people trying to access all of that right now. I can’t make it any more clear.

2) Keep your preventative programs up to date. Almost all of them issue constant updates to stay current with the threats they’re protecting you from, and have some sort of weekly–or even daily–update option available. Use this!

It’ll only take a few moments, and if you don’t keep these programs current then you might as well not even have them. The threats constantly change as those who want your information try new ways to get at it. These programs have to update frequently to keep up with those changes, otherwise it’s like putting up a fence but never closing the gate.

Here are a few simple things to avoid doing as well that will help in preventing malicious spybots, trojans and worms from infecting your system and accessing your information:

A) Never open suspicious emails from unknown senders. Have you heard that before? But did you listen? Most people don’t and just invite hackers into their homes or offices by opening these messages.

If you don’t already, start making a point of checking the sender’s address and subject line of every email you get before opening it. If something seems odd to you, it probably is and you shouldn’t open the message.

B) Never click on links or attachments/downloads in an email message unless you’re 100% sure of who sent it, and why. You may think it’s a harmless link to some online silly joke or video from your co-worker, but it could very well be something sinister that they didn’t actually send you.

C) Never use the login form of any web site page that you arrived at from an email link. This is the most common way identity theft occurs. Someone sends you an email that looks like it came from your bank, credit card company or some other financial institution and asks you to login to your account, with a link to the login page provided in the email. The problem is, it’s all fake.

Even if it looks like you’ve been taken to your bank’s web site, you’re more likely on a special landing page that was made to fool you. Then when you enter your normal login data on the page, they are waiting to capture it and within seconds your real account has been emptied.

If you think an email from your bank or credit card company is real, then visit their site by typing the actual address into your web browser yourself and find out. But do not use the link in that email!

–
Heather Moore & McGeeks.com promote fun and safe computing habits online. Perform a FREE spyware and adware scan of your system right now at http://www.mcgeeks.com/adwarealert/

Technorati Tags: adware, spybot, spyware, trojans, worms

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There are many advantages to using VoIP Broadband for phone calls. One is the cost. In general, VoIP phone services cost far less than a traditional phone line. Another big plus is that VoIP to VoIP phone calls are free which means that the sooner everyone begins to use this service the cheaper everyone’s phone bill will be.

There are also benefits when it comes to the functionality of VoIP phones. For starters, you can connect to the VoIP network regardless of where you are as long as you have a high speed internet connection. This means if you go on vacation you can bring your phone with you and connect to the internet to accept incoming calls on your regular number at the same rates as if you were home, no matter where in the world you are.

Another advantage is that there are free phone numbers available for VoIP use in the US, UK, and other countries. Call center agents with a VoIP phone can work from anywhere as long as they have a high speed internet connection. Along with all this, VoIP gives you lots of extra services for free, where regular phone companies would charge you such as 3-way calling, automatic redial, call forwarding and etc.

This is why VoIP is a smart choice and has been taking the world by storm recently.

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by Heather Moore

Heather operates a VoIP informational and comparison site. Learn more about VoIP at http://voip.save-mor.com

Technorati Tags: voip

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