I get nervous about recommending any kind of app that promises to polish your PC back to the perfect state it once was. On the Mac, Disk Inventory X is a great alternative to the Windows-based WinDirStat or WizTree that can help you figure out which folders and files are eating up the most space on your system.
If you have less than 8GB of memory, run a quick web search using this information to find out whether upgrading your Mac with more memory is something you could even do. On some Mac models, Apple soldered components to the motherboard to make them much more difficult to remove and replace. If you see an upgrade type listed—like memory—then you can reasonably upgrade it without much issue.
Beyond that, if your Mac is old enough to be rocking a hard drive instead of a solid-state drive, this upgrade is a no-brainer. Everyone needs a break from work, your computer included. Also, when you install or update a program, it often asks you to restart your computer. Despite your best intentions, later becomes way later, and multiple updates and patches sit incomplete, potentially slowing your system. If your computer is running slow, shutting it down and restarting it is one of the simplest potential fixes.
When it runs low on memory, it slows down. Sometimes programs can get stuck or they shut down improperly, hogging a huge amount of resources behind the scenes. Browsers can be memory hogs. We make it worse when we add a whole bunch of plugins and extensions. Some of them are practically required, like a pdf reader.
But the ones that create an animated cat every time you open a new tab? Probably not so much. To make matters worse, multiply that by the number of tabs you have open. Try bookmarking pages and coming back to them later, rather than keeping dozens of tabs open.
Whenever you use a program or browse the Internet, your computer creates temporary files so it can recover lost data if the program or computer crashes. In an age of always-on PCs connected to the open Internet at high speed, rogue software tries to install itself on your computer at every turn.
Viruses sent via email with inviting subject lines such as "Anna Kournikova pics; " and "I love you" threaten home computers as well as entire office networks. Pushy programs put themselves in your computer's startup process and slow down overall performance. Microsoft still supports both operating systems with security updates, and apps and Web browsers like Chrome will run on either without complaint. The best way to make a computer of this vintage feel new again is to totally reset Windows, which will wipe all files and applications from the operating system and return it to a like-new state.
Microsoft has pages walking you through how to reset Windows 8 and Windows Wait for the reset process to complete, and then install all Windows updates —this step may take two or three reboots, depending on how long your PC has been out of commission.
Four- or five-year old computers may be worth upgrading if they feel a bit slow but you want to keep using them. Our guide to SSDs has advice for replacing a slow spinning hard drive. PCs running Windows 7 are a little harder, but not impossible, to repurpose.
0コメント