Improve Your Computer’s Performance

Time is money—and when you have a sluggish computer or spend time trying to hunt down missing files or e-mails, you’re wasting a whole lot of both. Just as you can improve your car’s performance by practicing regular maintenance, a few simple computer strategies can boost your productivity and save time.

Get Organized

It’s likely that more time is wasted in business trying to hunt down a file or e-mail than anything else. There are several reasons for this, and each has a simple fix. First is poor folder structure.

If you can’t make out your wallpaper image because you have so many files on your desktop, you’ve got a problem. It’s time to put those files in their proper folders. Think about how you would organize these files if they were paper. You might structure them by project, project type, date, client or process of completion, for example. Don’t be afraid to nest your folders as deep as they need to be to make things easier to find. Also, if you find old files that you don’t expect to use anytime soon, burn them onto a disc and delete them from your hard drive. This will save hard drive space and ultimately improve the performance of your computer.

A simple trick if you have a bunch of folders or files and you want a particular folder to always appear at the top is to start the folder name with an underscore. For example, _Projects would appear before Invoices.

Another trick is to improve the metadata for quicker searching in the future. Both Mac OSX and Windows Vista offer useful systemwide search, which you can improve by right-clicking on any file, then clicking on Properties (for Windows) or Get Info (for Macs). Here, you’ll want to add useful tags that you might search by later, such as an individual’s name, client name, project phase and so on.

One final organization trick is to use Smart Folders (Macs) or Search Folders (PCs). You create a smart folder identifying the criteria of the files you want included. This may mean your folder contains files opened within the past five days, files of a certain file type, files modified by a specific user, and so on. The criteria can be filtered by themselves or combined to offer targeted results.

Back It Up

Beyond dumping old files, back up your system in case you accidentally delete something or face a more serious catastrophe. Macs and PCs both have backup software built in. For PCs, it’s called the Backup and Restore Center; for Macs, it’s called Time Machine. For both of these to work, you’ll need to buy an external hard drive so you’ll have someplace to store the data. For most personal computers, a 500GB to 1TB drive should offer plenty of room, and can be had for about $100.

Don’t Get Sluggish

A slow computer can make you want to pull your hair out. The easiest way to speed it up is to reduce the number of applications running simultaneously. Applications running in the background sap power, so turn on your radio instead of running your music player; close your calendar app if you’re not using it.

The next step is to defragment your hard drive. (This is a Windows-only step since Mac OSX operates differently and doesn’t need defragging.) Go to Accessories, then System Tools, click Disk Defragmenter, and click Defragment Now. This takes little bits of data scattered all over your computer’s hard drive and reorganizes them so your computer can find them faster.

Love Your Widgets

If you really need to look at a calendar, use Widgets (for Macs) or Gadgets (for PCs). Widgets are small, typically single-purpose applications that provide useful information at a glance. So instead of firing up your Web browser to find stock quotes, your Google AdSense balance and news headlines, use Widgets. Mac OSX even offers a quick tool built in to the Safari browser that allows you create a Widget by clicking on the Open in Dashboard button (next to Forward and Back buttons), then selecting the part of the Web page you want to track. For example, clip part of a page on eBay to track bidding, and you’ll never have to open your browser to keep an eye on things.