by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.
Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 39,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.
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- German Publishers Assocation Cheers EC Pressure on Amazon: @Porter_Anderson
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Sometimes the simplest way to speed up a computer, especially if it’s old, is just buy a new one. (I try to swap out mine every three to four years.)
Alex–Good point. I think my dinosaur of a laptop is due for an upgrade.
Our laptop is over 8 years old and my husband is stunned it still works.
I wish finding those book clubs was easier.
Diane–I think yours and mine are the same age. :) Lenovo ThinkPad?
IMHO, most of the things on Jacqui’s speed-up list won’t help. There’s a lot of emphasis on removing files which will probably not even be noticeable in terms of performance.
Adding memory and converting to a SSD drive WILL help dramatically. Jacqui mentions making the SSD just a startup drive. To heck with that! Replace your old drive with the SSD one and live life! :-) Seriously, though, you can migrate all of the data on the old drive to the SSD.
Coincidentally, yesterday I ordered an SSD for my 2010 MacBook Pro. I don’t think that the computer is any slower than it was before but the SSD will be a huge boost on the existing hardware. The MacBook cost me more initially but it’s still going strong 7 years later. With Windows you can feel the creeping slowness in your bones.
Speaking of Windows…
Windows itself is the biggest performance killer. It starts out fast but in a matter of years becomes practically unusable. I’ve seen it time and time again. Like Alex said, the easiest fix for that is to buy a new computer. Or, wipe the disk and start fresh. Neither is appealing.
So, if you have tech support, add memory and an SSD. Both are very cheap these days.
If you are adventurous, you can try the free Ubuntu operating system to replace Windows. In fact, you can run both on the same computer if leaving Windows behind is too scary. It’s called “dual boot” such that you can boot into Ubuntu or Windows depending upon what you want to do.
I realize that my suggestions are very techy. But sometimes you have to fight tech with tech! ;-)
Mike–Sounds like some solid advice here! I’m not sure how adventurous I am in ditching PCs or Windows, but you’re making it all sound intriguing!
Fortunately, I’ve got good tech support here, ha! (Husband in IT). He’s been trying to get me to ditch this laptop for years…
Just thought I’d follow up on my previous comment with some joyous news…
I just converted my Macbook from a standard hard drive to an SSD. My programming environment (think Word on steroids) used to take 2 minutes and 50 seconds to start up. With the SSD it now takes 46s. :-)
Woo-hoo! That’s a huge improvement!