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10 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer Now

by Terrence O'Brien on February 12, 2009 at 12:01 AM



4. Turn off visual effects

Windows Vista, OS X, and even most modern Linux distributions come with fancy animations (like OS X's "genie" animation when you minimize windows) and effects (like Aero's transparent window borders in Vista). Unless you have a decent graphics card, those little animations can eat into precious system resources.

In Vista, you can turn off the fancy Aero window decorations by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalize. Click the Windows Color and Appearance link, and follow the 'Open classic appearance properties for more color options' link at the bottom of that window. From there choose the Windows Vista Basic theme to disable the fancy transparencies.

For even better performance, right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Click on the Advanced System Settings and then, under the Performance section, select Settings. Here, you can uncheck all the fancy animated effects and windows previews. The same tip also works for Windows XP.

In OS X, turning off the eye candy is a little more difficult. Under System Preferences select Dock. Then choose Scale Effect next to 'Minimize using,' and uncheck the box next to Animate Opening Programs. In addition, be sure to avoid using an animated wallpaper. To turn off additional effects, you'll have to download an app like Cocktail or TinkerTool, which will let you customize many of OS X's hidden options.

On a standard Ubuntu desktop, all fancy effects can be disabled by going to System and, under Preferences, opening Appearance. The last tab should say Visual Effects. Simply select None on that tab. If the standard Gnome desktop environment is still too slow, give XFCE or Xubuntu a try.

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