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Make a habit of using Defrag on a regular basis. The more file movement you have, the more often you will need to perform this basic housekeeping routine. On the Downside is the increased wear on the Hard drive if it is performed too often. The idea is that files over a period of time become fragmented. This means that your computer has to work harder to collect all the ‘bits’ of a file that you require to use. Once you have used defrag on a drive your files will be in one continuous piece. (We often use the term CONTIGUOUS to describe this.) Defrag will normally be located under Programs - Accessories - System Tools with Win95 or Main under Win3.1

2. STANDARDISE! STANDARDISE! STANDARDISE!

The catch cry of the nineties. It has never happened has it? Now is the time to get rid of proprietary document encoding. Convert existing Current documents and make all your New Documents HTML! What is HTML ? It is the standard used to format all documents traversing the InterNet. This way any ‘Document’ can be used on any of your Computers, be they IBM compatible or Macintosh etc.

The best thing is, the Document will look the same no matter what computer you are viewing it on! Better yet, because they are in HTML format you can make a painless transition to an IntraNet and once again you don’t have to pay a fortune for Netware and the like because you don’t need it! In addition if your organisation is looking at a public web site there is less effort required to get the material for your site as you have already done it!

This has been made even easier by Office97 (Yes I know its a Microsoft product, but aren’t they all?) as most Documents can now be saved and edited in native HTML format.

3. SPEED IT UP!

Many a time I have looked at a computer to find that even the most basic things are left at default which normally equates to middle of the road performance.

a) Speed up your Keyboard (!) Did you know that most BIOS setups allow you to specify the TYPEMATIC Rate of the Keyboard? What is the Typematic rate, I hear you ask? It is how long the Keyboard takes to respond to different activities such as leaving a key pressed, how long the delay is before repeating (It should be short as possible!) the character and how quickly it should place the characters once it starts repeating them ( as many as it will allow - fast!)

b) Swap drive - for as long as any of us can remember we have survived by twigging our swap drive sizing , and if you are using Windows 3.1, 3.11 and Windows For Workgroups there are definitely some performance gains to be had here! Just don’t get too greedy or performance will get worse! First of all go to Virtual Memory and disable the swap drive. Defrag your Hard drive and then re-enable virtual memory, check that the Virtual Memory 32 Bit access is enabled (unless you are using a laptop, in this case forget this section and move on) and that it is a permanent swap drive.

There is a direct relationship between real memory and how much virtual memory you can have. If you don’t get carried away here virtual memory is a usual method to allow you to run software that your computer would not be able to run. For instance if you have only 4 Meg of Ram and a 4 Meg swap drive this would (all things being normal) allow you to run a program that requires more then 4 Meg of Ram.

If you cannot or do not wish to purchase more Ram (ie Memory) this can be a cheap way out. On the Downside if you use your Hard-drive as the swap drive and it happens to frequently performance will suffer, as a Hard drive is significantly slower then real memory. If you are running Win95, you’d best leave it alone or suffer the wrath of the computer gods! It's up to you!

c) Ignore above and buy some more RAM! Currently memory prices are the cheapest they have been in years. A good investment is to go out and buy some more memory. If you are running Win 3.1 or 3.11 then about 8 Meg is the ‘sweetspot’ for optimal performance versus cost. If you are running Windows for Work groups and are connected to a Network or Work-group then 16 Meg is a good start.

Win95 - well according to various sources you can run Win95 and its various derivitives (depending on what service pack you might have installed and the age of your Computer - (Microsoft also has a completely new release of Win95 (Win96?(!))) on 8 Meg of Ram ( this particular version of Ram is only available on Mars on Tuesday’s. ) 16 Meg is a good starting point and somewhere between 24-32 Meg is more appropriate depending on the duties of your computer. If you use it for Heavy duty DTP then 32 - 64 Meg may be for you! With 16 Meg of RAM costing around $120 or so, it is a relatively cheap way of increasing the performance of your PC.

d) Off load some fonts - what? If you have more then 400-500 fonts installed the performance of your system will suffer as a result - in particular the boot times may become most irritating. Windows will check that each font is available when it is booting. This applies to any version of Windows. Use a program such as fonter to go through and catalogue your fonts then remove the ones that you dont like or dont use. Also frees up some hard drive room!

Please Note: No responsibility can be accepted for any results that may occur with the use of these tips, as their use is entirely out of our control. Before doing any changes to your Computer of any kind you should always perform a back up. Feel free to print these tips out for later reference.