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Top 8 Programs That Can Make Your Computer Run Faster

makeuseof.com — It’s a common problem among computer users: after a few months, our computers become weighed down by programs and all sorts of other junk, and inevitably become sluggish. For the less tech-savvy users, this may induce thoughts like “Why is my computer so terrible?” or “I guess I could always upgrade this… what-cha-ma-callit RAM thing”.

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 27, 2009

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  • kylescousin, on 10/26/2009, -2/+459Programs that nest themselves in the msconfig "startup" piss me off.
  • drGt1987, on 10/26/2009, -5/+270My computer runs fastest when there are no programs on it at all xD
  • infinitus64, on 10/27/2009, -1/+167I'm looking at you google updater. etc etc.
  • sgerwel1985, on 10/27/2009, -1/+132Finallyfast.com! Such a ***** program.
  • ChewbaccaDef, on 10/27/2009, -12/+123Let's not forget the easiest way to make you computer run faster: deleting System32.
  • geodebug, on 10/27/2009, -42/+132"Top 8 Programs That Can Make Your (Windows-brand) Computer Run Faster"

    Most of these don't apply to *nix systems. No registry to worry about. No defragging program needed. Checking what processes are running is always a good thing though.

    Not trying to be a Windows-hater (because OS pissing matches are frigging annoying) but the article is obviously Windows-oriented and the submitter should have provided that context.
  • catvllvs, on 10/27/2009, -2/+91I pride myself on being able to do anything I want with my computer and not worrying about how many processes I'm running.
  • inactive, on 10/27/2009, -5/+81I pride myself in running my comp as minimal as possible. I try to keep it under 30 processes (on XP anyways) at startup. I shudder when someone asks me to look at their computer and they say they haven't installed anything yet there is 82 processes running eating like 600 megs of RAM or more.
  • thisthatwhat, on 10/27/2009, -1/+76Programs that run 8 processes in the background piss me off.
  • bringitontimx, on 10/27/2009, -5/+64Foobar2000 might be the ***** name ever given to anything ever.

    Still a better alternative to iTunes, though.
  • enozten, on 10/27/2009, -15/+74i prefer media player classic to VLC
  • zantos420, on 10/27/2009, -0/+58it'll run so fast you'll swear it's not running at all!
  • hankthedwarf, on 10/27/2009, -1/+40Foxit USED to be fast and light, but it's gradually become bloated over the past couple of years, totally defeating its original aim of being a faster alternative to Adobe Reader. PDF X-Change Viewer is a lot better, with better features, and it's free.
  • estate, on 10/27/2009, -3/+40like iTunes...
  • mason092, on 10/27/2009, -1/+38Well the magic awesomeness of the Mac makes it impossible to screw up, right? No problems! It just works.

    What have we learned? If you suck at computers, you are gonna screw up your computer, no matter what OS it has.
  • computershack, on 10/27/2009, -5/+35"Not trying to be a Windows-hater (because OS pissing matches are frigging annoying) but the article is obviously Windows-oriented and the submitter should have provided that context."

    With more than 90% market share, I think its a given.
  • skate3214, on 10/27/2009, -1/+31iTunes especially, I actually wrote a startup and shutdown script for iTunes that would enable the services and start them when starting iTunes, then kill the services and disable them on closing iTunes...***** iTunes...
  • Cyborg326, on 10/27/2009, -2/+31Any digg user worth his salt already knows about/uses most of these.

    Still a good list.

    I agree though that Foxit definitely isn't the best alternative to Adobe anymore for PDFs.
  • ThantiK, on 10/27/2009, -5/+32No program can make your computer run faster. It can just make it use less memory and waste less CPU cycles...

    Kids these days...
  • skate3214, on 10/27/2009, -0/+27Wait does that mean she can run 2 copies of Norton!?
  • al1encas1no, on 10/27/2009, -1/+27My computer is FAST! FINALLY! FinallyFast.com!
  • mason092, on 10/27/2009, -8/+34My friend that has a Mac always complains about things screwing up. The other day, something was using all of his CPU ad he couldn't find what it was. Another time, somehow all of the default apps got double installed. The last time I used a Mac, I was switching between Windows and OSX. Nothing bad happened on Windows but Firefox crashed on OSX. So yeah, don't kid yourself. Macs aren't problem free.
  • ileftfark, on 10/27/2009, -0/+26Try Sumatra or PDF-XChange. Then you'll see why everyone says Reader sucks. All that bloat and startup ***** (updater always running?) to just open a .pdf? ***** THING SUCKS.
  • Akraz, on 10/27/2009, -3/+28In before fan boys and arguing
  • Latigoliath, on 10/27/2009, -11/+35itunes is for retards.
  • eviljolly, on 10/27/2009, -1/+25Never buy an HP printer then.
  • artfiend77, on 10/27/2009, -0/+23He's on Digg. Speaking from experience, even if he had all the programs available his productivity would still be at zero!
  • M3tALHaz3, on 10/27/2009, -0/+22It's called "uncheck the box next to that option"

    you tard
  • j2los, on 10/27/2009, -0/+22Limewire? Did I just get blindsided by 2004?
  • PhillyOC, on 10/27/2009, -1/+21CCleaner is a fantastic program for basic clean-ups. It makes it so easy to keep what cookies are helpful (like Digg of course!).

    Just a quick tip for people who do not use CCleaner yet, click "analyze" but do not hit "run cleaner" yet. Go to "options" then "cookies". Highlight the cookies that you would like to keep in the left column and use the arrow in the middle to move them to the right column. Now when you clean out your cookies you do not have to log back in to many of the sites that use them.

    Malwarebytes also has a damn good program called Startuplite that everyone should check out. it analyzes your startup and makes it a no-brainer on what to shut down without screwing yourself up.
  • asgardshill, on 10/27/2009, -2/+22no woman, no cry
  • iheartevil, on 10/27/2009, -3/+23Don't you sass my VLC.
  • masterstghm, on 10/27/2009, -2/+21Buy your mom a core i7 machine with 24GB of memory and she can run as many instances of bloatware, updaters, and anti viruses as she wants.
  • Kakemonstere, on 10/27/2009, -4/+23Ah i get it now, so if something goes wrong on the Mac then it's because the user isn't good and its his fault. But on Windows it's the OS fault and not the user.
  • ldavid, on 10/27/2009, -0/+19Limewire? You're getting it all wrong.

    Torrents.
  • rft3rd, on 10/27/2009, -0/+18Finally fast dot con! (pun totally intended)
  • Sertis, on 10/27/2009, -1/+18www.auslogics.com has a very nice free defragger
  • enantiodromia, on 10/27/2009, -4/+21All good suggestions. CCleaner is actually pretty decent for cleaning the Registry and UnInstalling things.

    I'd suggested using DiskKeeper for defragging, though it isn't cheap.
  • amftwz, on 10/27/2009, -10/+26Im down to 12 processes running at startup myself, http://www.blackviper.com/ is amazing for tweaking your system.
  • KMartSheriff, on 10/27/2009, -4/+20Well then perhaps you should upgrade to a modern computer (one that doesn't have XP installed) and then realize how retarded constantly keeping things down to 30 processes is.

    Seriously, do you have 128MB's of RAM or something? What do you even use your computer for?
  • Super6, on 10/27/2009, -4/+19It's safe to assume that the number of articles about Windows will be roughly on par with it's install base
  • inactive, on 10/27/2009, -0/+15You might like Defraggler, its made by the same company as crap cleaner. Its pretty simple and works well.
  • masonga95, on 10/27/2009, -4/+19It sounds like he kinda fails at computers.
  • mamboboy, on 10/27/2009, -1/+16I concur. My friend (who's a computer dumbass) bought an ancient laptop a while back. Something like 800mhz cpu, 256mb ram, 20G hard drive. Obviously it was running like crap so he gave it to me to sort out. I replaced all his resource hogging programs (mostly iTunes which pretty much killed the thing) with liter alternatives. I replaced the aforementioned with Winamp - added all the plugins so it worked with his iPod and explained why I did it.
    It was actually running quite speedy at this point considering it's age.
    But I went back a few days later and woe and behold, Winamp had been uninstalled and iTunes put back on - because it was "crap" and "nothing like iTunes".
  • cyrix, on 10/27/2009, -0/+13I like how there is two macs at first in the computer and the one is running windows.
  • macmcraeart, on 10/27/2009, -2/+14incorrect - windows 7 WILL make your computer run faster. ;-)
  • darkfate, on 10/27/2009, -3/+15Well then he obviously isn't awesome enough to have a Mac. /snub
  • TrancePhreak, on 10/27/2009, -2/+14NVidia control panel -> overclocking... Computer running "faster".
  • Elset, on 10/27/2009, -1/+13My computer's fast! Finally!!
  • BuzzFriendly, on 10/27/2009, -1/+13You do know that a Mac is a PC with a different OS don't you?
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