Performance optimizers use similar logic when optimizing your system settings – for example, they look at orphaned start-up programs bidding you to remove them.

They also look for residuals of uninstalled or incorrectly removed programs to make your PC cleaner, safer, and, ultimately, more stable.

What should you look out for when choosing a performance optimizer?

Ideally, product will be robust and make efficiency gains in way your CPU handles Windows and all your programs.

You must also be able to monitor CPU, memory and hard drive usage to identify possible future bottlenecks and avoid annoying delays and crashes.

The software must also optimize your RAM and page file memory while warning you should you be running out of resources.

You should have an automatic way of making most of your computer while minimizing time it takes to boot.

Registry files are also a source of slow-downs and crashes – you will have a faster PC by compacting your registry.

Finally, software must ensure that any harmful or unnecessary background processes such as spyware, adware, key-loggers and viruses do not slowdown your PC and jam its inner workings.

Many products on market focus on a single aspect of your PC such as optimizing registry files or recovering memory.

Although these are important functions and will enhance your computing experience, you will end up buying performance optimizers and using them in conjunction with other products.

My advice, at this stage, is to find a product that does most of functions and then deepening your investment according to problem you might have.

Only when you feel that you cannot push your PC further should you consider upgrading hardware.

With all this background information, you do not need to google “speeding up my pc” or “performance optimizers”.

I usually do three things when buying utilities:

(a) find out how they work and what they are supposed to do;

(b) see what my preferred tech forum newsletters have to say about them and their recommendations;

(c) read reviews on recommended products.

Luckily, this system has worked wonders for me and I have rarely thrown away good money on software I have in my library.

Most computers do not handle page file memory efficiently and often leave information there that is not needed anymore.

You must balance amount of RAM available with amount of page file memory computer creates. This may be difficult and aside from getting your hands dirty to tweak system physically yourself, there are automatic optimizers that will do this for you.

3. The hard drive:

A fast hard drive and its connection to CPU is also extremely important. The faster these two elements are, less delays you will experience because of page file memory allocation.

Given your present hardware configuration, however, you need something that warns you when hard drive is overloaded and needs attention.

Some performance optimizers, like SpeedUpMyPC, help you do this quickly and easily.

4. Starting up:

Over lifetime of your PC, you will find yourself installing a portfolio of programs.

As this collection increases, so will number of shortcuts in your automatic start-up list increase without your knowledge and approval.

As you add more programs that must be started when you switch on your computer, you will see a general degradation of performance and a slow down in boot-up times.

Controlling what you install and making sure that you have cleared all unwanted residuals from uninstalls is a good way of reducing start-up times.

However, sometimes there are so many processes to control and keep track of that good start-up management becomes difficult if not impossible.

Some performance optimizers list all auto-started applications allowing you to stop those that you don’t need anymore.

5. Background applications:

Spyware and other malicious programs work in background and are invisible even to Windows Task Manager.

Aside from privacy and security issues, they cause your PC to start executing tasks indiscriminately thus reducing priority of legitimate programs and causing serious slow downs.

A few performance optimizers help you make sure that you block any of these threats to ensure that your PC is more stable and powerful.

Next week, I will take a look at how these performance optimizers work and what you need to look out for when choosing one for your new tiger!