In 2007, Microsoft introduced “Windows DreamScene” into Windows Vista. This feature made it possible to enjoy a video clip, and not just static images, as your desktop wallpaper. Although users loved it, DreamScene was only available as part of the “Ultimate Extras” program—and only those users with Windows Vista Ultimate could access the feature. To [...]
You demanded more results from our security solution performance benchmark series, and here they are! If you’re a newcomer, here’s what’s been happening—in January, we kicked off a series of speed tests to measure the impact of antivirus solutions and full-blown security suites on a typical PC. We explore how much security tools affect Windows [...]
Google Chrome led the way, then Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 followed—modern browsers are becoming less cluttered, render websites faster, launch even quicker, and still add tons of new features with every new release. However, there’s still one thing that has a negative effect on all these fantastic improvements and that’s poorly written, low-performance [...]
By now, you’ve heard about TuneUp Program Deactivator. It’s the answer to performance and stability problems caused by having too many programs running at once. Program Deactivator works by turning off programs that drain your PC’s resources and once you need them again, turning them back on. In our last post, we gave you all [...]
Do you own a computer with multi-core processors? Have you heard about processor affinity? If not, you’ll learn here what it is and how it might help IT pros get more control over the performance of their applications. A little bit of background—many computers these days have multiple core processors. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many [...]
The last day of this year’s TechEd 2010 was a busy one! In the coming weeks, you will see a couple of blog posts on some of the best sessions I attended. Unfortunately, there was just too much presentation content to quickly put together some blog posts on all the great things from the show [...]
There is no shortage of myths circulating that falsely claim to improve PC performance. From allegations of a “secret” CPU setting, Dr. Watson misunderstandings, to Prefetch misconceptions – the PC world is rife with myths that need to be busted — and explained. This podcast does just that, tackling the myths about PC performance that [...]
Does your PC seem to run slowly right after you start it? Did you follow all of the optimization tips we’ve covered on the TuneUp Blog so far? If so, your computer may be bogged down by a renegade process that continuously uses nearly all of your processor (or CPU) resources. In this post, I’ll show you just how much of an effect this has on your PC, what may be the cause and what you can do to prevent this from happening.
The TuneUp Blog team previously proved that several common Windows myths, such as disabling the Dr. Watson program and tweaking Windows’ prefetch folder, are, in fact, wrong. In this blog post, we’ll explore yet another fallacy that has been a hot topic of discussion in the Windows community for a long time—a “secret” CPU setting [...]
We’re slowly ushering in a new era, in which the processors on modern graphics cards (graphics processing units or GPUs) are capable of much more throughput than classic central processing units (CPUs). We are already seeing the first signs of this shift in technology with nVidia’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) which offloads tasks to [...]
