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Is your desktop or laptop computer starting to feel a little poky? Even after
just a few months of use, your PC or Mac may start to lose steam thanks to a
fragmented hard drive, too many programs running in the background, or
even a rogue piece of malware.

PC MAC

This week on Upgrade Your Life, Yahoo! News' Becky Worley serves up
some quick and easy tricks for speeding up your PC or Mac, starting with

1. Clean out your startup items

How long do you have to wait after hitting your PC's power button before
you can actually get to work? Thirty seconds? A minute? Two minutes? More?
30 1 2

If you find yourself routinely twiddling your thumbs while your PC or Mac
painstakingly boots itself up, maybe it's because your system is trying to fire
up a slew of programs at the same time (and indeed, some programs will set
themselves to launch at startup by default). Here's how to ease the frantic
rush of competing startup programs:

For Windows: Click the Start menu, then select Programs (or All Programs in
Windows 7), open the Startup folder, and thenas Becky suggestdelete
mercilessly. (Don't worry; you're not deleting the programs themselves.) Note:
if you see a program sitting in the Startup folder and you don't know what it's
for, search on the Web to see what it does before hitting the "delete" button.
Windows Windows 7

For Mac: Open System Preferences under the Apple menu, click the
Accounts icon, and then click the Login Items tab. You may find a variety of

arcane programs and helper apps lurking inside (such as the mysterious
iTunesHelper), but againsearch before you zap an unknown program.
(Disabling the iTunesHelper app, for example, will prevent iTunes from opening
automatically when you connect an iPhone or iPod.)
MAC

iTunes
iTunes iTunes iPhone iPod

2. Check for running apps in the Windows task bar

Got a Windows-based PC? See that little row of tiny icons in the bottomright corner of the screen? Over the course of weeks, months, or years, the
number of icons sitting in the Windows task bar has probably grown larger
and largerand many of those icons represent programs that are running in
the background and consuming your PC's limited resources.
Windows
Window

Expand the task bar by clicking the little arrow on the side, then right-click
each icon in succession. If you find, for example, that programs like Skype and
iTunes are whirring away even when you're not using them, right-click and
select "Close"or, better yet, open the program and uncheck any "launch at
startup" settings in the Preferences or Options menu.

Skype iTunes

3. Turn off P2P applications P2P

Programs like BitTorrent and Skype work their magic with "peer-to-peer"
technology, meaning they leverage the combined computing power and
bandwidth of every PC or Mac running their software for such uses as massive
file transfers (in the case of BitTorrent) or high-quality, Net-based voice and
video chat (for Skype).

BTSkype
PC MAC
BT Skype
But while sharing the P2P burden qualifies you a good Netizen, it can also
put a significant dent in your system's performance. If you've got programs
like BitTorrent and Skype running all day, every day in the background, Becky
suggests shutting them down until you really need them.
P2P
BTSkype

4. Root out viruses and malware

Nothing will slow your system down like a virus, a Trojan horse, or other
types of malware. Plenty of commercial antivirus applications are available for
Windows PCs, but Becky recommends trying Microsoft's free Security
Essentials suite, which will sweep your system for any unwanted, nefarious
software and provide ongoing protection via regular updates. Just visit
Microsoft's Security Essentials website, download and install the software, and
follow the instructions.

Windows

Anti-virus packages from the likes of Norton and McAfee are also available
for Mac users, but there's an ongoing debate about whether virus protection
on the Mac is more trouble than it's worth, given that malicious hackers are
far more focused on Windows than they are on Mac OS X systems.

Windows Mac
5. Clean up your hard drive
The more junk you have cluttering up your hard drive, the longer it takes
for your system to access the data it needsand that's a great reason to
regularly scan your folders and toss out files and programs you don't need, or
move them somewhere else to make more room.

One easy (and relatively cheap) solution, says Becky, is to buy an external
hard drive for your music, photos, and videos, which can hog a surprisingly
large amount of disk space (particularly when it comes to HD-quality TV shows
and movies). You can find 500GB external hard drives online for as little as
$50, while plenty of 1TB drives (or 1,000 gigabytes) sell for south of $100.
Most USB 2.0 external drives are plug-and-play, meaning you just plug them
into your PC's USB 2.0 port and you're ready to start dragging and dropping.

500GB 50
1TB 1000GB
USB 2.0
Another options: online storage sites, such as Dropbox and Carbonite.
DropboxCarbonite
115
Becky also recommends dumping any old programs that you no longer use.
For Windows, click the Start menu, open the Control Panel, and select
Add/Remove Programs (or "Uninstall a program" in Windows 7). Mac users can
look in the Applications folder, which you can open in the Mac OS X Finder by
clicking the Window menu and clicking Applications. See a program you
simply never use anymore? Consider tossing it in the trashalthough again,
never throw away an application without knowing what it does first.

6. Turn off Mac Dashboard widgets

One of the more recent features in Mac OS X is the Dashboarda layer of
handy widgets that you can call up by clicking the Dashboard icon in the
Dock. But while Dashboard widgets might be great for a quick check on the
weather or to track the Dow, they also eat up a decent chunk of system
resources.

Do yourself a favor and deactivate the widgets you don't use all that often,
Becky advises. Activate the Dashboard, then click the "plus" sign in the
bottom-left corner of the screen; next, click the "X" in the upper-left corner of
any widgets that you won't miss.

+X"

7. Try a new browseror update your old one

Has your browser been slowing to a crawl lately? Maybe it's time for a new
one. Both Firefox and Google's Chrome Web browsers are popularand
powerfulalternatives to Internet Explorer, and don't forget that there's a
Windows version of Apple's speedy Safari browser.

Chrome IE
Safari Windows
Want to stick with the browser you have? Make sure you're using the latest
version. For Internet Explorer, fire up the Windows Update app under the Start
Menu. For Firefox, select "Check for update" under the Help menu. Got
Chrome? Select "About Google Chrome" under the wrench icon in the
Windows version, or under the Chrome menu in Mac OS X. For Safari, launch
"Apple Software Update" under the Start menu in Windows, or select Software
Update under the Apple menu on the Mac.
IE
Windows
Chrome Windows Chrome
Chrome Safari

One more thing: make sure you have the latest version of Adobe's Flash
Player installed. Visit Adobe's Flash site to download the latest and greatest
version (10.2, as of this writing).

Adobe's Flash Player Adobe's Flash

10.2
8. Defragment your hard drive
Your computer's hard drive is a lot like a closet: the more cluttered it is, the
longer it takes to find stuff. One of the easiest (and most effective) ways of
tidying up your hard drive is to defragment it, a process that involves
consolidating scattered blocks of data into a larger chunk, resulting in bigger
swaths of free disk space.

Luckily, defragmenting your hard drive in Windows is a snap. Select

Computers from the Start menu, right-click on the icon that represents your
hard drive, select Properties, click the Tools tab, and click the Defragment Now
button.
Windows

Got a Mac? Thanks to the disk optimization features built into Mac OS X,
there's "little benefit" to manually fragmenting your hard drive, Apple says.
But if you're feeling the need to try it anyway, there are several third-party
defragmenting utilities for the Mac, including iDefrag and Drive Genius; just
make sure to back up your data before giving them a go.

iDefragDrive Genius
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