Improve your Computing and Blogging Performance:

I’m so pleased with the results that my heart is just bursting and I can’t hold it in any longer. I feel like waltzing through the mountains and singing a tune from the Sound of Music.

Ok Bloke, enough of that claptrap and get a hold of yourself. Breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Deep breaths. In and out. That’s it…

Now where was I. Oh yes, so like I told you earlier ole Betsy (Mr. Bigglesworth is still sick) is screaming like a brand new computer again. There are one or two tricks I did to accomplish this. So I thought you might like to know too and breath new life into your ‘puter to be an even better blogger than you already are.

1. Move your Pagefile over to another partition. Microsoft itself even recommends this:

The paging file is the area on the hard disk that Windows uses as if it were random access memory (RAM) This is sometimes known as “virtual memory.” By default, Windows stores this file on the same partition as the Windows system files. You can increase the performance of Windows, and increase free space on the boot partition, by moving this file to a different partition.

In my case, the primary partition where Windows resides was almost full up. There is nothing like a clogged hard drive to kill performance. Windows needs to write to the hard drive (especially for swapping if your memory gets low). In my case the Pagefile was taking up more than a gig and a half of space, and moving it over to another partition (preferably on another hard drive) made a big difference in performance. Ultimately you will want only your Windows and program files on the primary partition. Everything else should be put elsewhere.

2. Speaking of hard drives, they are so cheap now I can’t imagine anyone not having a second slave drive. It is a good idea to put your backups there, and install a second copy of Windows as well so that you can have a dual-boot option in the event of a disaster.

3. Move your “My Documents” over to another partition and/or a separate hard drive. Again, my docs were getting huge (around 4 gigs). Moving it is simple. Just right-click My Documents and choose “Properties”. Under the menu “Target” you will see a “Move” button. Just choose a different location and voilà. You have just freed up a ton of space from your primary Windows partition.

4. Now that you’ve freed up all this space you can perform a proper defrag. The defrag that comes with Windows is rudimentary and won’t work properly if your hard drive partition is full. But now that you’ve cleared up all this space defragging won’t be a problem. Also, I recommend getting the full blown version of PerfectDisk which is the maker of the freeby that comes with Windows XP. Running CHKDSK once in a while wouldn’t hurt either.

The benefit that I noticed right away was how quickly my computer now responds. It was like I upgraded my computer and it didn’t cost me a dime. Sweeet! I don’t have to reboot nearly so often as I did before, and ole Betsy is now able to use my resources much more efficiently.

SO why did we do all this? Without having to make an expensive hardware upgrade your computer will now run much faster and efficiently just like it did when you first purchased it. It will be able to load more programs simultaneously (multitasking), get more things done in less time and with less hassle.

So what does this have to do with blogging? You use a computer don’t you? You have a bunch of tabs opened in your browser sucking up your computer juices don’t you? Maybe a newsreader as well that is residing in your system tray gobbling up all your ram? Shall I go on?

Work better, smarter, faster. If you do these simple things I guarantee you will breath new life into ole Betsy, or whatever you call your main squeeze, er computer. And you will be an even better blogger than you already are too.

So Blog On!