Is your PC bringing down your work-from-home vibe?
Here are ways to speed up the performance of your computer
Now that you’ve been working from home for a while, you’ve likely had it up to here with your slow, balky, out-of-shape personal computer.
After all, not everyone was sent home from the office and handed a zippy new work laptop as they went out the door. Some of you are making do with your home computers, and you may be discovering their, um, limitations.
Regardless of whether you’re using a Mac or a Windows PC, there are things you can do to put the spring back in its step and lower your frustration level a notch or two, without dropping a ton of cash.
Here are some strategies for speeding up your computer, starting with approaches that are absolutely free to those that will cost you a little money – but a lot less than buying a whole new rig.
Trim back running programs and delete crapware
Of all the things you can to do speed up a slow computer, this is the easiest and most effective. If you’ve owned your personal computer for more than a couple of years, or if you’ve installed a lot of software, some of it could be slowing you down. This can be true for both Windows and Mac machines.
Begin by uninstalling software you know you don’t need. On a Windows PC – particularly one that came from a major manufacturer such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung or Acer – it’s likely to have a good amount of software in the form of trial versions, as well as programs that duplicate some of Windows’ own functions. If you’ve never used them, you can probably safely remove them, though it’s a good idea to Google anything you’re unsure of. This is not an issue with a Mac.
Both platforms can have issues with background programs. To see what’s running, restart your computer and let it just sit for a few minutes after boot-up, without launching anything else. Make a note of any splash screens that appear.
Then, on a Windows 10 PC, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Click the Startup tab to see what launches when your PC boots up. If you don’t want a program to start, click it and then click the Disable button. You may also have to go into a specific program’s settings to keep it from launching at startup.
Use Task Manager to see what processes are running by clicking the Process tab. Don’t know what a particular one is? Right-click on it and choose “Search online.” You’ll get search results describing it. You can then track down the app and change settings or uninstall it.
On a Mac, startup programs are found in Settings, then Users & Groups and then select Login Items. Click the Lock icon in the lower left of the preference pane and enter your login password to get access. Highlight the item you don’t want to run at startup and then click the Minus button. As with Windows PCs, you may need to stop some programs from running at startup by changing their individual settings.
Finally, the Mac has its own version of the Task Manager, called Activity Monitor, located in the Utilities folder. Click the CPU tab once it’s launched, and you can see what’s demanding lots of resources. Activity Monitor doesn’t have the built-in search feature found in the Task Manager, so you’ll need to do a web search to learn more about the process.
Both the Task Manager and Activity Monitor can cause you grief if you disable the wrong thing, so make Google your good friend before you start nuking apps. If you’re unsure about what to do, it’s best to do nothing.
Fine tune your software and hardware
For both Windows and
Mac computers, make sure you have the latest updates for the operating system and your most-used apps. The one big caveat here: Check with your company’s IT department to make sure required software is compatible with those latest OS versions.
For example, the current version of the macOS, 10.15 Catalina, no longer supports 32-bit software. If your business relies on apps that are only available as 32-bit programs, you’ll want to hold off updating.
If you are using a Windows PC with a traditional hard drive, Windows 10 should automatically defragment the drive weekly. Defragmenting ensures that various parts of any given file are contiguous on the drive, so the drive doesn’t have to search all over for data. Defragmenting is not necessary if you have a Solid State Drive, or SSD.
To ensure your hard drive is indeed being defragmented regularly, in File Explorer right-click on the drive icon and choose Properties, then Tools and Optimize. Make sure the schedule is set to weekly. And if you have an SSD and it’s set to defragment regularly, turn it off — defragmenting an SSD can do more harm than good.
Finally, make sure your anti-malware program is up-to-date and running regular scans. Malicious software on your computer — both Windows and Mac — can rob performance as well as your personal data.
Add more memory
Here’s my first suggestion that will cost you some coin, but it also is one that can do a lot of good.
If you’re using an older computer with 4 gigabytes of memory or less, adding more will give you a noticeable speed bump, particularly when you use multiple programs at once. This is true for both Windows and Mac computers, though may be problematic for the latter – lots of Macs made after 2014 don’t allow you to upgrade the Random Access Memory, or RAM.
Check the specifications for your machine to see how much RAM it can support, and the type that works in it. This information should be available on the tech support area for the manufacturer’s website, or a Google search might turn it up. The support information should also tell you whether the memory is replaceable at all, or soldered to the system board. If it’s replaceable, there should be documents on the site with instructions for doing so for your specific system. In many cases, it’s fairly straightforward.
At the minimum, I’d recommend 8 gigabytes of RAM for most Windows and Mac computers. If your machine can handle more, and you can afford it, adding more is worth it. Depending on the type of memory your system uses, you’ll likely pay under $50 for 8 GB, less than $80 for 16 GB. (Note that you’ll need to discard your existing memory modules, as RAM needs to be matched.)