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Newsletter #1 - Computer Performance |
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We have long been planning a newsletter to provide computer maintenance tips, to help
safeguard your business information and keeping it flowing. Particularly, we want to
let you know what you can do to keep your computers running smoothly and to understand
and maintain your data back up systems. There's nothing like confidence in your systems and backups to help you sleep at night. And there will be a test... as one of our clients recently found out! We hope you enjoy these articles on the biggest hardware and software influences on your computer's performance. Next time: The importance of backups and how to insure their success. |
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The short answer is... new is better, cheaper,
faster. A 2GHz
processor is faster than a 1GHz, and 1GHz is faster than 750MHz. But when
it comes to performance, there are many contributing hardware factors.
The big three are. . .
Keep in mind that the CPU can only process information that it has. All information initially resides on the hard drive. When the computer boots up, it reads the information from the hard drive and loads it into RAM memory. The CPU can then call the information from RAM memory. If you don't have enough RAM to store the operating system (OS) and all the applications, the system will begin to save less used information to the hard disk. This is called swapping. Swapping has a very big performance cost. To give you an idea of how much memory is necessary... I have Windows 2000 Pro, Outlook 2000, and Trillian (this great free chat program) open right now. I am using 153 Mb of RAM. If you regularly have more items open, you will require more RAM to keep from swapping. In addition to quantity of RAM, there are speed considerations as well You motherboard and CPU must be able to take advantage of the faster types of RAM available Be sure you know what type of memory to get before you purchase it, as it is sometimes difficult to return RAM. The hard drive is the next slowest form of common memory. So the faster, the better. New drives are generally much faster than older ones. So for the most part, you can't go wrong by simply getting a newer, bigger hard drive. If your computer is an older one, try to get a drive with a controller card to insure you are taking full advantage of the disk's speed. If you require very fast disk operations consider a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) . RAIDs can be configured for speed by aggregating the speed of each disk. Everyone knows, more is better. This is especially true when considering your computer's performance. |
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Windows Of all your software, the operating system (OS) has the greatest impact on your computer's performance. And for better or worse, Windows is the most popular OS on the planet. It all started when, as those of us who saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley" know, Microsoft stole the idea for the mouse and the graphical user interface (GUI) from Apple, who'd just stolen it from Kodak (or was it Xerox). The GUI (pronounced goo-ie) allows you to, for example, drop and drag files (represented by little pictures of folders) into, say, a garbage-can-looking thing. Previously you had to type out the word DELETE and the file names. Instantly with a GUI, no more typos. And no more having to memorize programming syntax. Wah hoo. Worldwide, Windows 98 is the single most widely used piece of software. It recently replaced Windows 3.11 for that enviable position. But, if you're running Windows 98, at least upgrade to Second Edition, and install all the Microsoft Critical Patches you can get a hold of. 'Course that's good advice to all Windows users. . . regularly hit that "Windows Update" button or visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ for a good scan. Run all the "Critical Updates" and don't forget the "Drivers." But don't install their "Recommended Updates" unless there's a specific problem you're trying to solve. . . often, those are more trouble than they're worth. But if you're running Windows 98 for your business, consider the possibility that you need to increase your budget for technology. A modern, small business that relies on networked computers to help make its money needs to be running NT, Windows 2000 and/or XP Professional. Win98, Millennium Edition and XP Home Edition just may not be up to the task. We recommend Windows 2000 Server with Windows 2000 Professional on workstations. While including all the important improvements, Windows 2000 has been around long enough that most of the bugs and compatibility problems have been worked out. Bottom line for the business owner: Win2K is the most dependable operating system to come out of Microsoft to date. |
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