Wacom Bamboo Product Review: See the full product review at Wacom Bamboo Product Review.
Optimizing Vista - From Microsoft
- Delete or Uninstall programs that you do not use.
- Limit start up programs.
- Defragment your hard drive.
- Use Disk Cleanup to reduce the number of unneccessary files on your hard drive.
- Run fewer programs at the same time.
- Turn off Visual effects (appearance versus performance)
- Add more memory
- Scan for viruses and spyware
- Disable services that you don’t need.
- Check for updates from your computers manufacturer.
- For more advice, click HERE.
Side Note: We mentioned disabling User Access Control in the show. User Access Control is the anoying messages you get when you want to something in the systems configuration. Here is the steps to disable it.
NOTE: Disabling this will lead to a less secure computer
- Go to Control panel
- Select User Accounts
- Click on ‘Turn User ACcount Control on or off”
- Uncheck the box next to ‘Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”
- Click ‘OK’
Daveac’s Tips
He talked about setting the priority of a process to limit a program on how much processor power it uses.
- Right Click in empty space on task bar and select ‘Task Manager’
- Go to the ‘Processes’ tab
- Find the process taking up CPU cycles
- Right click process and select ‘set affinity’ then choose the CPU you would like that process to use.
No more sidebar: The sidebar that holds all the gagets can be closed and have the gagets put directly on the desktop.
- Click and drag each gaget that you want to save onto the desktop.
- Right click the sidebar and select ‘Close Sidebar’
NOTE: To get the sidebar back, simply right click a gaget and select ‘ATTACH TO SIDEBAR’ then drag other gagets back into it.


ramington
/ November 10, 2008I like most things about Vista, but not the defragmenter, I dont feel its truly automatic as its so so slow and it also doesnt give an idea of the defrag progress. I am trying out an alternative program (Diskeeper08) which seems to be working great on Vista. Its got a cool GUI, fast automatic defrag and supposedly also defrags even if you dont have 15% free space.
mike
/ November 10, 2008Thank you for your comment.
I agree with you Ramington, the defragmenter that comes with Windows Vista is just a basic defrager. Diskkeeper is a great program, however, there also free open source programs that are easy to use and do a great job. I will post links to them and maybe talk about them on the next show.