This weekend I got to play with a Compaq Presario v3000, it is a computer model released in 2006 and by today’s standards, its already well beyond its years. But that doesn’t mean it is unusable, in fact, the specifications are still ‘kicking’ so to speak; there isn’t a doubt in my mind that during the time that it was released, it was one of the most powerful.
A lot of people still use these machines and will more often choose not to let them go because buying a new one will be expensive and because as long as it can do tasks which doesn’t require much computing power (word processing and facebook), everything is still dandy.
So here’s three simple tips to make sure you have the best experience with computers with a little bit of ‘mileage’ to them.
– Reformat and Reinstall
Contrary to popular belief, Windows 7 with all its flair and effects, actually run almost as fast as Windows XP, but of course if you really want something responsive you shouldn’t go too far, a Windows XP SP3 system is well known, stable, and has gone through plenty of optimizations and bug eliminations.
This will remove bloatware and whatever else might have made an intrusion into your system, make sure to get all the device drivers ready prior to doing this, or at the very least, an internet connection to take down most of the drivers from the web.
– Choose a non-invasive Antivirus system
Most of the free and even some of the paid AV systems constantly run processes that slow down the computer’s performance almost to a halt and that is never a good thing. You can give Panda or Kaspersky a try, Ive heard some good things about it. Personally I use NOD.
– Install ‘timely’ software
While the latest software versions will allow you to do work more intuitively, these often come at the price of having a large installation footprint and plenty of miniscule processes that eat up system resources. Be advised that ‘upgrading’ is a marketing strategy of software companies to continuously earn, it is not necessary to do it unless you’re dealing with people who use the latest file extensions and versions to save their data in. Using older software in new hardware equates to speed and responsiveness.
So there you have it, there are plenty more optimizations and tricks that can be performed but that requires a little bit of jargon and most people couldn’t care less about saving a couple of megabytes or RAM.
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