CONTROL YOUR DESKTOP

 
After weeks or months of intensive usage of your computer you have certainly noticed that applications load slower and slower whatever may be the amount of Random Access Memory - RAM - you have available on your system. This sluggish behavior may even happens if your system has a whoopee 256 MB of RAM.

What are the reasons for that? They are of two kinds:

It is a good to run from time to time - depending on the usage you make of your system - the maintenance item provided by WINDOWS to defragment your hard disk. I use the tool once per week.

Here is how to proceed:

• 1- Click "start".
  
• 2- Choose "Programs"
  
• 3- Click on "Accessories"
  
• 4- Choose "System tools"
  
• 5- Click on "Disk Defragmenter"
  
• 6- and choose the hard drive you want to defragment and click "OK"

If you have partitioned your disk, you have a possibility to defragment all the partitions in one go. At point 6 above outlined, scroll down the arrow and choose "All hard disks" and click OK.

B- CONTROL ATTRIBUTION OF RAM TO APPLICATIONS

When you start your computer and WINDOWS loads, it grabs the maximum of Random Access Memory available; and when you load additional applications they also do the same. However, when you close these applications, they do not relinquish the total of the RAM they captured; and finally you may end up running out of memory...and being obliged to restart the whole system to free memory.

WINDOWS does have a tool in the "Accessories" called "Resource Meter" to handle the smooth allocation and relinquish of memory. That "Resource Meter", however, is also a memory hog; a big memory guzzler, which can crash your system. I run it once and got a big bang! I was frightened to death convinced that I have completely destroyed my hard disk.

There are other utilities, less far hungry of memory which make it a snap the attribution of memory to applications and the subsequent relinquish of said memory when an application is closed.

1- RamOptimizer from RamOptimizer.com allows you to instantly free up memory when your system slows down.

2- Cacheman by Thomas Reinman is a utility which tweaks the disk cache settings and prevents frequent swapping of the data to disk resulting in an improved performance and stability.

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FREEBIE

 
This month, as a celebration of AFRICABIZ first anniversary, we are offering you a bunch of freebies. Click here to reach Asiatravelmart button and visit our travel promotion site. There, you may scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Utilities" link to reach a wealth of tools - most of them free - to make your trip planning as easier as possible.

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