I am a total fanatic about speed. I want computer / internet things to go fast. To quote Top Gun, "I feel the need, the need for speed!".

Nothing aggravates me more than something going as slow as a 56k modem. Since I have DSL broadband, I figure it isn't asking much for my Firefox browser to open within the next century or for Gmail to load before it gets out of beta. So I am constantly looking for hacks and tweaks to make things go faster. I am constantly tweaking the Windows Registry to disable non-essentials and to make other things go faster. When I re-boot the computer, I am sitting there with a stop-watch timing how long it takes for the PC to re-boot fully.

As a result, I have noticed the Windows OS speeding up more but three programs are still refusing to speed up for me - Firefox, Gmail and Microsoft Word (Word being the biggest offender). But I have found a few interesting tips that have helped to a certain degree :

Firefox : strip down all non-essential extensions first of all, including any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts. This includes anything that has no real practical use but only makes the browser look pretty (such as Color Tabs). Once that's done, right-click on the Firefox shortcut on your PC desktop and in the target box (where it says "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"), put /prefetch:1 at the end to now make the link "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /prefetch:1 . What does this do? It makes the Windows operating system cache the Firefox browser to make it open faster (Windows normally does this with Internet Explorer so you're basically switching it around so Windows does it with Firefox instead). You will need to open and close Firefox a few times though to see any change but eventually I HAVE noticed Firefox speeding up slightly.

I also found this which is a tweak to the about:config browser feature. I did what the author suggested and nothing appears to be going wrong as a result!

Another thing which has helped is uninstalling any unnecessary toolbars and browser buttons. So choose your one favourite toolbar (mine is the irreplaceable Google Toolbar) and disable the rest. I strongly recommend avoiding the Yahoo toolbar which in my opinion is bloated and not as flexible as the Google Toolbar.

Remove any buttons from your browser which you don't need (right-click on the bar and choose "customise"). I eventually managed to get everything I needed onto one bar and the difference in speed is noticable. The appearance of the browser is also nicer and sleeker. Less really is more.

Gmail : This is a tough one which has annoyed me for ages. I love Gmail but its loading speed is embarrassingly long. But some things I have picked up in my speed quest. In the "settings", choose 25 conversations for your main view (you can choose to have up to 100 conversations in your main view which REALLY slows things down). Disable any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts and any other unnecessary features in the Gmail settings. Install the Better Gmail extension and in the options, remove the invitation box (remove the labels box too if you feel you don't need it). The key is to not give Gmail too much to load up and to strip it down to the bare minimum that you need. Even with these changes though, it COULD be a lot faster.

Microsoft Word : I have NOT found anything about speeding up MS Word. If anyone can provide any tips on how to make MS Word open faster and load "doc" files faster, I would be grateful. I use MS Word a lot and so far it is really annoying me when it can take up to 15 seconds to open a document (which might not sound a lot but you sit at your PC for 15 seconds and you'll realise quickly what I mean). At times I am seriously tempted to install Open Office which does the same job as MS Office and is free.

Oh and before I forget, the award for the slowest installation ever goes to iTunes. I installed the upgrade to iTunes yesterday evening and it took a staggering 16 minutes to upgrade an already-existing program. It refreshed "registered components" 6 times, removed "security features" 5 times and by the time it announced to great fanfare that it was finished, I was blinking unbelievably at the PC clock, trying to work out if I had got the 16 minutes time wrong. But nope, it started at 21.41 and ended at 21.57. Then when I opened iTunes, I couldn't see any difference between that version and the last version!

Any other speed freaks here with tips on making the computer go faster? Put them in the comments!

OK, the title of this post is slightly misleading as it may not be 10GB for you. But the following method is definately one worth doing to see how much space you can claim back from the Windows OS (as it already takes far too much).

There's a feature on your PC (if you have XP or Vista) called "System Restore". This allows you to roll your PC back to a previous state if you screw something up. Now by default, the System Restore feature uses 12% (!) of the total space on your drive to save restore point files and settings. If you use the standard settings, XP creates a restore point every day. The actual size of a restore point varies but using the standard settings, your PC could be holding data on 200 system restore points, which you don't really need.

Now you can easily reduce that System Restore space to just 1GB on your hard-drive which all you will ever need. When you do so, XP will delete the rest of the data and give you the space back. Plus in the future, System Restore points will only use up that 1GB of space.

Since I am using a German language PC, it is pointless to make screenshots if you don't understand German, so just do this : go to Control Panel then System then System Restore. Now using your mouse, slide that slider to the left until you get to around 1000MB (1GB) of space. This should be either 1% or 2%. When done, click the "apply" button to save the changes then "OK".

Now how much space did you get back? I got 10GB!

It's a fact of life that programs crash, hard-drives die and websites close. That's why it's essential to have back-ups of all your essential programs and information.

Here are some programs / websites that allow you to do backups. You can either keep the back-ups on your hard-drive or even better, buy a USB flash drive or a re-writable CD disk to keep all backups off-site. You can also buy a back-up hard-drive that is permanently attached to your regular PC hard-drive which is constantly backed up by a synchronisation tool such as SyncBack. But if you decide to keep your back-ups on your main hard-drive, make sure you have a way of getting to them if your hard-drive dies. Make a separate "backup" folder and update it regularly.

1. Back-up Mozilla Firefox - after being let down by the FEBE Firefox back-up tool, I started hunting around for another Firefox profile back-up program. I finally found MozBackup and it seems to be much better than FEBE. Backing up your profile seems to be easy but the program author warns that some Firefox extensions are not supported in the back-up. So I keep a "txt" file with a list of all my extensions. If one fails to be restored, I can then Google it and re-install it myself.

2. Back-up Outlook Express - I don't use OE but my girlfriend does. We keep a backup of her emails and address book using ABF Outlook Express Backup. It encloses everything in a password-protected "exe" file which can then be double-clicked on and restored to OE if disaster strikes.

3. Back up your Skype contacts - Go to Tools then Advanced then "Back up contacts to file". This creates a "vcf" file of all your contacts.

4. Back up your del.icio.us weblinks - go to Settings then "Export / Backup". Decide if you want your tags and notes saved too. Then generate the backup. This is saved as a HTML webpage.

5. Backup your photographs - export them all to a free Flickr account using the Flickr Uploadr.

When I bought my current PC back in 2004, I was proud that I had a computer with 80GB of space. I thought to myself, "no-one can use 80GB! I'll never have a space problem again!". Fine words indeed because these days I am struggling to make space on the "C" drive.

Keeping space is very important because some programs don't work if you drop below a certain level of free space. For example, a defrag tool that I use won't start unless I have at least 15GB of space free.

But with a bit of effort, you can keep making free space on your computer by doing some regular tidying up. Some of the following suggestions are extremely obvious and simple while some others are tips I have picked up along the way. So for the sake of thoroughness, I have included them all. You can start by downloading WinAudit which gives you a complete breakdown of how your hard-drive space is being taken up.


Delete temporary internet files and cookies -
This one is the first obvious port of call. You can delete temporary files and cookies in the following way :

Internet Explorer : Extras - Internet Options. When the box comes up, there's a button in the "General" tab for deleting cookies, temp files and browser history. Click that.
Mozilla Firefox : Options - Data Security tab - there's buttons there to delete everything.

It might also be worth manually checking the folders where these things hang out. Just go to "Documents and Settings" - your Windows username - local settings. The temp folder is in there.

You can also delete temp files and cookies by using the excellent EasyCleaner, mentioned in Part One of this series.


Delete unused software
The rule of thumb to use for this one is to uninstall any piece of software you haven't used for at least 4 weeks. A lot of software has only initial novelty value and then after a week or two, interest starts to die down and it sits on your computer unused and hogging up space. Get rid of it! Go to the software option in your control panel and take a long hard look at what you've got installed. You can always re-install it again later if you decide you really want to keep it. Remember to check afterwards to see if all traces of the program have been deleted. Quite often, the program gets deleted but the program folder remains.


Clean the Start Menu
In the "Programme" tab of the start menu are the shortcuts to all your software programs. When you uninstall a program, sometimes the shortcut icon remains in the start menu. Clear them out! Each shortcut is only 1KB in size so cleaning out the old ones will do nothing to your hard-drive space but hey, it makes things look tidy!


Use EasyCleaner to delete other files
The Windows XP search tool with that annoying dog is totally useless. So this is where EasyCleaner really comes into play because it can effectively find and delete un-needed files by entering the following :

*.log - this finds log files which are often not needed and can be deleted. This can include chat logs for IM programs for example.
*.txt - this finds regular text files, but be careful with this one what you end up deleting. For example, you can probably delete something like "README.txt" but I wouldn't advise deleting "licensekey.txt"
*.tmp - finds temp files that may no longer be necessary. Delete with caution.
*.html - this finds weblinks in your hard-drive, most of which may be special offers by software companies or links to help pages. But again, be VERY careful. If you have a website and you use your computer to store copies of your webpages, you could end up wiping out your website! Luckily Easycleaner allows you to specify hard-drive folders that are off-limits.
*.scr - this is the file format for screensavers. Delete the ones you don't use anymore.

Delete unnecessary folders -
Many programs (such as Skype) install mandatory folders in the "My Documents" area of your computer. When you uninstall one of these programs, the folder remains in the "My Documents" area. So go to the "My Documents" set of folders and if there is a folder there for a long uninstalled program, delete it.

Delete files
This can cover a wide multitude of areas :

1. When you install a new software program, check the folder for needless files. This can include log files, README.txt files (obviously read them first to make sure they're nothing important), PDF user manuals, HTML weblinks to special promotions and much more. Delete what you don't need and move the manuals to a CD (I have a CD devoted solely to software user manuals). To use another example, Skype gives you a multitude of wallpapers and avatars (some of them downright ugly). Choose your best five and delete the rest.
2. If you have e-books and magazines in PDF format or Word, remove the pages you want to keep and delete the rest.
3. Try moving some of your documents online to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Or if you have a website, move files to your domain directory.
4. Burn files onto CD disks.
5. Move your MP3's to an MP3 player or an iPod.
6. Burn media files to a DVD disk.


Turn off the archiving / history feature on Instant Messaging programs
If you use Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger or AOL Messenger, you can enable all your chats to be logged as "txt" files in your computer. If this is unnecessary, switch it off.

Backup and delete Outlook emails
You can save Outlook emails individually to a CD disk and then delete them from your hard-drive. Consider switching to web-based email.

Compress essential files
If you MUST keep files on your computer, compress them into "zip" or "rar" format.


In part 3, we will be looking at backing up your essential programs and information. Stay tuned.

While doing my regular routine clean-out of my computer hard-drive, I realised why I was losing so much hard-drive space so quickly.

I love new software programs and new gadgets and so I am often installing new programs and tools to test them out. But I have noticed more and more that when you install a program (even from a big well-established "name" on the internet), you often get a lot of crap that comes with it.

Take programs such as Skype. When you install Skype (or if you've installed it already), take a close look in the Skype folder on your hard-drive where the program is located. Apart from the actual program, you'll also find a multitude of Skype wallpapers and avatars - which you will probably never use. Just pick your best five and delete the rest. Or take a Google program such as Sketch-Up - upon installation, you'll find "README.txt" files, log files, and even PDF manuals.

Most software programs these days automatically add lots of "txt" files to your computer as well as PDF documents, weblinks, Word documents.....the list just goes on and on. So I recommend you do what I do and go through each folder carefully and delete all the dross. You may be surprised at how much hard-drive space you'll free up in the process. But be careful though not to delete anything that will crash the program. The old adage applies in this case - if in doubt, leave it alone.

Oh and if you uninstall a program, make sure that the hard-drive folder is actually deleted. I am also noticing that when I uninstall a software program, the original program folder is left in the C Drive along with some files that were not deleted. So it pays to keep a watch on that too.