Hi Guys.
I here was my solution on slowing breaking down computers.
I own a Toshiba Satellite laptop got it in 2005. Its broken down three times and been repaired the same, then one day my buddy told me to stop using the laptop as a laptop!
First was the power plug that goes into the back, the internal part snapped. Then the hinge problem I had too. He told me after fixing it just leave it open on my desk and don’t take it anywhere.
My wife runs the horse boarding business we have and she uses the net all day long, I use the net all the time and spend aprox 3 hours a day on it. Plus we keep all our household business and farm business on computers. I purchased a HP system last January for my wife with a nice 17 inch wide screen, Windows Vista, super duper chip speed, HD graphics, DVD burner you name it this thing was awesome. One month later was slower than dogs Do-Do. So I called on my trusty mate to give me his advice and this was his solution.
First he said that since me and the wife use the computer all the time we should each have one. Then we need a house computer that Never Never goes on the net. so a total of three computers were needed. An external 500MB hard drive was needed so my and her machine could back up files to that incase of crashes. (The computer that never goes on the net never talks to this Hardrive).
Now he wiped clean my hard drive (laptop) and reinstalled the back up disk that came with the system, he then completely stripped all the hog wash that came as a bundle and just left me with XP and all the drivers ect, he even got rid of most of Microsoft office which was about a 200MB file. Then he immediately made a back up copy of my fresh reinstall so later when I go to flush it out its goes back to basics again.
He then installed a program called ( C C Cleaner Found on FileHippo.com ) This program is free and basically flushes out all crap with in about a minuet. Then we downloaded a program called Zonealarm which is just a free fire wall, they sell a virus program too but you need to pay for it. He did the same with my wife’s machine so both of us have bare bones machines. As you start to use it after about a month it shows signs of slowing down you purge the hard drives again which takes about 20 mins on mine and an hour on hers.
The beauty of this is we both run on the net wide open, no antivirus programs nothing, I don’t care if I get a virus, now since we both use the external hard drive I have access to a up to date antivirus program over the net at a university here and every now and then I check it to see if I have anything on it.
The firewall stops a lot of trash coming through as you use it and lets you see what’s going on, let me tell you my five year old laptop is lightning, boot up takes less than a minuet and that includes logging straight into my email account, with hers its doubled but I blame vista for that.
So what I am saying is before you throw out your old system give my set up a try, don’t rely on just one system, one clean computer in the house is the key because you don’t care what goes on the trashy net machines. I also make use of net storage systems, I even use my email service to store information I need for further reference, I just email myself with what ever stuff I need and file it on there systems.
Hopes this helps. Anthony.
