PC Doctor January 20, 2010

 

   I have Widow's Vista running on my Dell Desktop. Vista came a desktop "gadget" that displays how much memory and CPU usage is occurring as I use the computer. However, I noticed even when I'm not using the computer the "gadget" is tracking the memory and CPU usage at least one-third usage. Is this a problem? Is there a way for me to lower the usage? Thanks.

 

Jacob

 

Dear Jacob, 

 

    The memory and CPU usage that you are seeing sounds normal for a Windows Vista computer. Vista, to run the software itself, takes one-third of your memory usage if you have 2GB of memory. However, I do have a tip that could significantly save you CPU and memory usage, which in turn could significantly increase your computer's speed. My tip is for you to disable a Windows feature called: Indexing Service. What this service does is to make the Windows built in Search a little faster. However, if you’re at all like the common Windows user, you probably rarely use the Windows Search. If you don't use the Windows Search everyday, than it's very worth your while to turn this feature off. 

    To turn this service off, go to Start > Computer > Right-click OS (C:) > Select properties > Uncheck "Index this drive for faster searching." > Hit the Apply button. A status bar will then appear showing you the clearing of the Indexing file; this could take a couple minutes. Once that finishes and closes, you are set. Enjoy your faster computing. If you wish to re-enable the Indexing Service, follow the same steps you took to do disable it.

 

PC Doctor

 

PC Doctor's Tip of the Week: Image Resizer

 

 The ability to resize pictures is very important, especially with the growth of sharing pictures via the web. Whether it's e-mailing your grandmother, pictures of the family or posting your Caribbean vacation photos to Facebook; chances are you'll need to resize the photos to contend with the web's upload standards. Resizing a photo via a photo editor can be confusing and in some cases, not possible.

     This week's Tip of the Week highlights a practical application I found named “Image Resizer Powertoy Clone.” I recently used this program to resize several scanned photos of old Athol, which I needed to e-mail to a library customer.  It worked great, and one thing I really liked about it, was how uncomplicated it was to resize the photos. I simply had to right-click the desired photos and choose "Resize photos" from the drop-down menu. This opened up a Windows pane, giving me 4 standard picture size options, as a well as a custom size option. Upon setting the size, the photos were duplicated and resized to the desired level. Thus leaving the original photo at the original size preserving the photo quality, but giving me a smaller photo to work with. You can find the program free to download at: www.imageresizer.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30247. Enjoy!