Optimize Your Computer!

I have an old laptop. Not only that, it's not exactly a high end model. I mean, it's from HP, and so far it's never failed me. It just lags... bad. And it has 40GB hard drive memory xD. Fortunately, I came across some programs that gave my laptop a performance boost. And they can work for yours as well. These are all free by the way, and use very little resources!

1. Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal - A great utility for getting rid of spyware and freeing up some memory. The entire process takes maybe 10 minutes at the most. (ooh! Firefox 3.0.2 just released! Sorry, I blog in real time xD) You can use this with your antivirus software and there shouldn't be any problems.


























2. JkDefrag - More effective than your default Windows Defrag, this defragger is not as flashy, but it gets the job done. Cool thing about this program is that it starts defragging upon start-up! Just double click the icon and let it do it's thing! It takes maybe a couple hours if you don't defrag regularly, so the more you use it, the less time it takes to defrag. I've gotten it down to like 10 minutes!




3. RamBooster v.2.0 - What else to say about this one? You download it and it helps free up some RAM.





















Those three really helped my computer with the lag problem; now it doesn't take like a minute for the start window to load xD. Plus my applications boot up a lot faster than before. If you want Windows to start-up faster, though, you may want to disable some start-up applications. You might already know this, but you can go to Run... and type "Msconfig" to disable some of those processes you don't need. Like if you run across a print spooler, and you don't have a printer (like me), you can disable it, no problem. If you don't know what a process does, you can always Google it.

While I'm at it, I'll show you some media software I use to watch movies and listen to music. I mainly use just two, but the both of them combined still use up less resources than, say, WinAmp (I have that too, but it's very slow for me - sometimes it just freezes even before it loads!). Check these out!

1. Foobar2000 - You might already know about this one. It only plays music files, but the application is really small, so it doesn't take long for it to load - maybe 5 seconds at the very most, and uses only about 5k memory to run.




2. Media Player Classic - Plays media files, and also doubles as a dvd player. I found this while looking for a program that can play dvd's, since I'm running into problems with Windows Media Player (says I have to validate it -.-). But this player is very good, and uses little memory to run. Best of all, it's already set to play dvd's; no need to download a codec or whatever. I wanted to show you the picture quality of this player (it plays a lot smoother and the picture is a lot clearer than my other player, which won't play my dvd's at the moment -.-), but it won't show. Very easy to use - can't go wrong with this one!





















Granted, these programs don't look as flashy as other programs, but you use software for it's functionality, not it's cool looking interface, right?

The Dust Settles... Finally

Finally, we got everything done - we moved to the new house, changed our mailing address, got rid of the junk my mom loves to keep, and kept the stuff we really need. Like my Playboys xD just kiddin.

We were actually very lucky to get this house, because we couldn't find an apartment to live in for the time being, and time itself was winding down. My mom talked to one of her friends, who was a real estate agent (go figure -.-), and it turns out she knew my friend's brother had a house that he was renting out. I had no idea, but he's rented it out to the Thai foreign exchange students when they were here, and I guess he decided to keep at it. It's weird since he still lives with his mom xD. Smart guy.

So we talked to him and he agreed to let us stay here in this halfway renovated house. There's no carpet, the heater is messed up, and the landscape design is horrible. Not to mention there's no ramp on the driveway like the other houses, so it's like runnin over a curb when I pull up. But the work he has done to it is really nice though. I like the paint job and the living room renovations. He put in one of those skylight type things on the ceiling where you install the t.v to the wall, looks real nice. Well, it's not a skylight, but it's one of those overhead lights... you know what I mean.

He also kept the furnishings he had before we moved in, which is good, because my bed before was just a mattress with no spring board or bed frame, that's why I usually slept on the couch xD. But now I got a real bed to sleep in. One of those full sets with the drawers on the bottom. HELL YEAH! We also got two more beds and a futon, which I've never used before. Only problem is we have so much stuff that my mom kept over the years that we have no place to put it. So it's still kind of cluttered here. I gotta try to convince her to let some of this stuff go!

But it's refreshing though, to live in a house, and not an apartment. We actually have a front/backyard now, and it's got 4 bedrooms and 1 1/2 bathrooms with a dining room and a laundry room. The works. Soon I'm going to start on the landscaping job, and hopefully he'll knock some of that off from our payments. It's gonna be a huge project.

Even though I don't own this house, it still feels like home sweet home! Still can't wait to move out and get my own place though.