I Have a Need For Speed

I want my computers to be fast and I go crazy if they’re not.  However, that doesn’t mean I have to lay down my credit card every time a new quad-gazillion speed demon machine is released, and neither should you! There’s a pretty good that chance the horse you’re currently riding still has life in it.

Now with that said, if you’re trying to use today’s latest version of desktop software on complex documents and you don’t have at least 4-GB of RAM and 25 percent free space on your primary hard disk, where your software applications are loaded, then maybe you’d better start reaching for that credit card. 

I can say a lot more about hardware and particularly about what’s important for desktop application speed, but right now I want to talk about the “soft” side of the issue and there are 10 things you can do to get your horse running faster.

1. Keep your software apps, and this includes your operating system, updated with the latest release.  Patches and upgrades are not just for security reasons and new features. Software vendors continually try to improve the performance of their applications and sometimes these patches address non-fatal system errors that are occurring and dragging down overall system performance.

2. Try to work locally on files and not over a network. That network server you have maybe blazingly fast but it still has to push all that data of yours and others through those little cable connection switches and routers. Also, don’t work on files directly from your third party Cloud drop-box.  Drop boxes are great for backup and file movement between machines, but they’re not built for speed.

3. If you’re creating or editing Word documents with Track Changes on … turn it off and learn to use Document Compare instead. Nancy wrote a great article on Track Changes corrupting files and that function is also is a major drag to performance on your computer as you work.

4. Restart (reboot) your system at least weekly. Your operating system needs to refresh its work areas. Overtime these work areas in RAM and on disk get fragmented.  Rebooting the system realigns and refreshes your RAM areas and temporary storage areas on your disk drive.

5. Log off your system daily. Just as the operating system’s work areas need refreshing, so do the individual applications. During any given period of time the system areas reserved for application are more actively used, thus they need refreshing more often.

6. When not being used, fully quit all open applications. Anything and everything that’s open is draining some level of resources out of your system. To prevent slowdowns and lock-ups, an individual apps workspace must be regularly reloaded.  It’s important to understand that to an individual application such as Microsoft Word, closing a file is not the same a Quitting or Exiting the application. If there are still other Word documents open, then Word’s workspace remains fragmented and cluttered.

7. Turn off or unload most of those global templates and add-ins that have virally embedded themselves into your Office applications. They are great tools but there’s a performance cost if you allow them in as embedded software. You can still get all their wonderful benefit by installing them as standalone applications. Specifically I’m referring to Snag-it, Flash, and Adobe PDF.

8. Be careful with the image formats that you insert into your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.  When possible try to keep the formats the same and try to avoid the BMP format. It carries about four times the processing overhead to deal with it in documents.

9. Be aware of image resolution. If you’re going to print, then 300 dpi is the maximum you need. If you’re only going to display on a screen, then 96 dpi all you need. Also, a previous blog from Nancy mentioned the docx format is better at reducing file size in image laden documents.  Why is resolution and file size import to performance?  Think about an overweight Jockey riding in the Kentucky Derby.  Need I say more?

10. In documents, floating shapes, images, etc. is more costly to performance versus in-line shapes and images.  In-line shapes and images are those that are anchored to a Paragraph mark.  The Office apps resolve their positions quicker and this helps when “scrolling” through large document.

Attending to these few “Soft” things will help improve the speed of your current system and keep a few dollars in your wallet longer.