PCPerformanceTips.com Blog

Here’s the shocking truth: dubious default settings, wrong configurations and wasteful processes are sapping many of your PC’s valuable resources. And what’s to blame? Windows.

Windows is deceptive. After you’ve installed it, the OS happily connects to the internet, downloads all the necessary drivers, configures itself and there you go – one stable PC all ready to roll. It couldn’t be easier or more convenient.

But the problem is, Windows doesn’t come optimised for performance. And it’s much the same story for most of your applications: they’re all set up to work, not roar along.

So what’s the answer? We say take control and don’t trust Windows’ default settings. Sure, they’ll yield a machine that is stable and dependable, and to a degree that’s the point. That’s what the average user wants, and it’s what Microsoft and PC makers need. By keeping configurations nicely conservative they’ll keep PCs the world over ticking along happily and calls to their technical support divisions low.

But we aren’t average users. We’re demanding users who want to squeeze every drop of performance out of our computers. So, join us as we declare war on default settings and automatic configurations. Take control of your PC and release its full potential!

Remove processes

A good first step when speeding up your system is to identify and remove the processes that are currently wasting its resources. Windows runs a slew of processes by default. Some are essential to the functioning of your machine, but many others are unnecessary resource hogs.

Process Hacker (a Task Manager-type utility with many more features) is perfect for sorting the wheat from the chaff, so go grab a copy from here.

Launch the program and rightclick the Name column header to define what information it should display. Ensure that ‘Name’, ‘PID’, ‘Pvt Memory’, ‘CPU’, ‘I/O Total’, ‘Username’, ‘Description’, ‘CPU History’, ‘Handles’ and ‘I/O History’ are all checked.

Now click ‘OK’ and you’ll see two small graphs – CPU History and I/O History – that give a visual pointer as to how each running process has been behaving in the past few seconds.

This is helpful information: if your hard drive has been thrashing for some unknown reason, for example, scan the I/O History column. Anything showing spikes of activity is a suspect.

Exactly what Process Hacker uncovers will vary depending on your system, but on our test PC we noticed that ‘IBurn.exe’ (a packet writing program provided with Cyberlink Media Suite) had regular I/O read spikes and that a process associated with VMware Workstation, ‘vmware-tray.exe’, was tying up CPU and I/O time.

It’s important not to overreact and start shutting down resource-hungry processes, because if you pick something important, your PC will crash. Instead, try to identify the process, and if it proves to be unnecessary, make sure it doesn’t reload next time.

To do this for IBurn.exe, we loaded the InstantBurn System Configuration Tool and clicked ‘Disable InstantBurn’ to stop it launching when Windows next started. The vmware-tray.exe process was just as easy to turn off: we launched VMware Workstation, clicked ‘Edit | Preferences | Workspace’ and cleared the ‘Show Tray Icon’ box to ensure it wouldn’t start again.

The next thing to do is click the Pvt Memory column header to sort your processes by the amount of RAM they’re using – a handy way to see the real resource hogs. Once again, we found programs that could be removed.

‘SkypePM.exe’ was the Skype Extras Manager, but we didn’t use them: clicking ‘Tools | Options | Advanced Settings’ and clearing ‘Automatically start extras’ meant that the process wouldn’t load next time.

If you’re looking for more savings, target ‘iTunesHelper.exe’. It launches iTunes when it detects an iPod or iPhone being plugged into the PC. If you don’t have one, run Regedit, head to ‘HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsCurrentVersion\Run’, right-click the iTunesHelper key and click ‘Delete’.

We’ve only carried out four tweaks so far, then, but we’ve freed up at least 47MB of RAM, as well as reducing background I/O and CPU activity. That’s not bad, but some judicious tweaking of Windows services may be able to deliver even more.

Stop services running

Windows services are small programs that run in the background, providing things to the OS and your applications. Click Start, type Services.msc and click the ‘Services’ applet link to see the services installed on your PC, which is almost guaranteed to include some that you don’t need. Here are some examples.

If you don’t use Media Center then the Windows Media Center Extender, Receiver and Scheduler services are all surplus to requirements. The Distributed Link Tracking Client maintains links between NTFS files over a network. If you don’t use that feature then it’s unnecessary.

Similarly, IP Helper is useless for those without an IPv6 network; Offline Files has no purpose if you don’t use its sync features; the Tablet PC Input Service is only for tablet PCs; and the Secure Socket Tunnelling Protocol Service is generally only useful if you’re connecting to a virtual private network (VPN).

APP BLOAT: Bloated apps like iTunes come with lots of unnecessary services and processes that slow your PC down

Potentially redundant third-party services include Apple Mobile Device and iPod Service, which come with iTunes and can be safely turned off if you don’t have an iPod or iPhone. Bonjour Service is only required if you need iTunes or Safari to discover network services; Nero BackItUp Scheduler belongs to Nero Burning ROM, and can be turned off if you’re not using the back-up tool; and Nvidia Stereoscopic 3D Driver Service is useless unless you have the 3D glasses needed to use Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology.

Think carefully about the services that can be safely disabled on your PC. (And we do mean carefully: get this at all wrong and you could prevent Windows from loading, even in Safe Mode, so if in doubt about something, leave it alone).

Then go to work turning off the unnecessary components. In some cases you may be able to do this by uninstalling a program from Control Panel. That’s where you’ll find the Nvidia Stereoscopic 3D driver, for instance. But with most options you’ll have to launch the Services applet (‘services.msc’) and tweak the settings yourself.

SERVICES: Change a service’s Startup Type to ‘Manual’ to ensure that it won’t load automatically but can be started if needed

The safest approach is to double-click the redundant service and set its Startup Type to ‘Manual’; it won’t be launched automatically, but will still be available if another service requests it. The problem is that this can leave some services running unexpectedly, so if you’re 110 per cent sure that something isn’t in any way system critical – Apple Mobile Device, say – then set its Startup Type to ‘Disabled’, and you can be sure that it won’t be launched again.

Create a Turbo mode

Some of the most resource-hungry Windows services shouldn’t be turned off permanently. We found that Windows Search consumed more than 250MB of RAM on our test system, for instance. That’s annoying, but we’d miss the service if it weren’t there.

SEARCH: Shutting down Windows Search recovered more than 250MB of RAM

The SuperFetch caching service can grab plenty of RAM, too, and it isn’t always effective, but on balance it’s still worth keeping it running. You wouldn’t want these services to disappear forever, then, but what about if you created a batch file to turn them off just temporarily? This could free up a considerable amount of RAM.

You may then get better performance out of a game or some other heavy-duty application that you’re trying to run, and you could use another batch file to restore the services when you’re done.

To give this a try, launch ‘Services.msc’, double-click each service you’d like to disable and make a note of its short name. This is labelled as ‘Service name’ on the dialog. Now create a file called Turbo-On.bat that uses the net stop command (as shown below) to close each service.

Feel free to leave SuperFetch enabled if it helps the particular app that you’re trying to prioritise, and of course you can add as many other services or programs as you like, just as long as they’re not system critical.

Here we’ve included a sample line that would shut down Skype’s services:

net stop wsearch
net stop sysmain
‘\program files\skype\phone\skype.exe’ /shutdown

Then create a second file called Turbo-Off.bat that uses the net start command to relaunch everything, as here:

net start wsearch
net start sysmain
‘\program files\skype\phone\skype.exe’

Store these files somewhere safe, and create shortcuts to each. Next, right-click the shortcut, click ‘Properties | Shortcut | Advanced’ and check ‘Run as administrator’. Now, whenever you need the maximum possible performance, launch the ‘Turbo-On.bat’ shortcut to free up some RAM and system resources. Then fire up ‘Turbo-Off. bat’ when you’re done to restore normal operations.

So far we’ve concentrated on absolute ways to divert your PC’s resources. But what about those programs that you must leave running, but aren’t system-critical – such as mail apps? It’s possible to recover resources from these applications, too, although it may take a little extra work to do so.

Let’s assume that you always need to have Outlook running in the background. By default this may grab processor time on any of your CPU cores (assuming you’ve got a multicore CPU). You can restrict the app to just one, freeing up the others for different programs.

In Process Hacker, right-click the ‘Outlook.exe’ process, click ‘Affinity’ and ensure that only ‘CPU 0′ is checked. Repeat the process with other non-essential programs that you have launched (nothing security-related though, and no Windows components).

Their performance will fall a little because they’re restricted to one CPU, but the rest of your apps should now benefit, as they get improved access to the rest of your system’s cores. Another way to make other apps run quicker is to reduce the CPU and I/O priority of a background process.

Windows does this itself with the Windows Search indexer and other components so that they don’t interfere too much with foreground apps, and you can apply the same trick yourself to limit a program’s impact on your system.

In Process Hacker, right-click the process you’d like to change (avoiding security tools, Windows components and anything system critical) and select ‘Priority | Idle’. Then right-click the process again and select ‘Miscellaneous | I/O Priority | 0′ to make sure that it gets the least possible share of your system’s attention.

You could also increase the priority of more important processes to High, which may mean that they get more CPU time, but be careful – doing so is risky. It’s more likely that your programs will block Windows’ own processes from running, and that could result in your PC crashing or locking up.

Don’t expect too much from these techniques, though, especially if you don’t have many background processes. With just Outlook and a browser running in the background on our machine, our tests showed that priority and affinity tweaking delivered only a two to five per cent improvement in foreground application performance.

However, if your PC is packed with busy background processes, this can be a very useful way to manage them. If you see good results then you can change your program shortcuts so that you’re able to launch them using the command line ‘start.exe’ tool, which can set their priority and affinity without Process Hacker’s help.

LASSO: Process Lasso can optimise all your process priorities to help deliver improved system speeds

It may also be worth trying Process Lasso, which assigns and manages process priorities automatically. It’s a commercial product, but it’s reasonably priced (from $20), and there’s a free trial available so you can see if it works.

Further basic rules

If you’ve followed our advice so far, you’ll have discovered and tamed resource-hungry processes, turned off unwanted Windows services and taken steps to reduce the impact of many other programs on your PC’s performance.

That’s great, but to get the most from your PC you’ll still need to follow two simple rules while you’re working. If you have a bulky application open but you won’t be using it for a while, don’t leave the window open on your desktop – minimise it. Windows will often free up some of the RAM it’s using immediately.

If you’re walking away from your PC and leaving an app running some lengthy task – rendering video, say – then make sure that the program is running in the foreground (just click its title bar). Windows gives more CPU time to the foreground app and you should find it completes more quickly.

Make games faster

Nothing is quite as demanding on your system as a cutting-edge game. To get playable frame rates you’ll generally need lots of fast RAM, a powerful graphics card, a decent CPU and a speedy hard drive. But if your PC isn’t quite up to scratch, don’t give up immediately – there are a few tweaks you can apply that may improve things.

As we’ve already mentioned, detecting and removing resource-hungry processes, freeing up RAM and keeping your hard drive defragmented and optimised will make a real difference. Updating your video drivers can deliver even more benefits.

For example, Nvidia claimed that its 195.62 release would increase performance by 10 to 20 per cent in many 3D games, as well as by 38 per cent in Far Cry 2, and by up to 80 per cent in Lost Planet: Colonies. Impressive? Yes, but unfortunately the driver was soon withdrawn because users were reporting that their cards were overheating, so updating on the day of release probably isn’t the best idea.

KEEP UPDATED: Keep your video drivers up to date to ensure the best possible performance

Stay aware of what’s going on, but let others try out new drivers for a couple of weeks before you jump in. In the meantime, you can always get an immediate speed boost by overclocking your video card. It’s surprisingly easy.

Overclock your card

Launch the Display Settings applet, click ‘Advanced Settings’, choose your display adaptor’s tab and fire up its control panel. If this is an ATI card then you should see an Overdrive section with sliders for GPU core and memory clockspeeds; Nvidia cards have the same, and add a Shader Clock slider for good measure. (Don’t see that? Make sure you’re using the Nvidia drivers, not those provided with Windows, and install the Nvidia System Tools from here.)

Tempting though it might be, don’t immediately push all these sliders to the maximum just to see what happens. Your PC will almost certainly crash, unless your video card overheats and dies before that happens. It’s much better to take a gradual approach, one slider at a time.

Push up the Memory Core clock by maybe 10MHz, save the changes and then run something like the Crysis benchmark (demo at www.crysisdemo.com, benchmarking tool here). If the demo looks fine then repeat the process, perhaps reducing the increment to 5MHz after a couple of overclocks.

CRYSIS: Tweaking just two configuration settings almost tripled our Crysis frame rate

If you’ve pushed the card too far then artefacts will begin to appear: strange lines, noise and general video oddities. In this case you should make a note of your last successful clockspeed, return to the default settings and move on to the next slider.

When finished, you’ll have the highest successful value for each clock, so try setting all the clocks at the appropriate value. This probably won’t be stable, so wind back the clocks you pushed furthest and try again until you’re artefact-free.

OVERCLOCKING: RivaTuner is an excellent video overclocking tool that works with both ATI and Nvidia cards

We tried this on a test PC and managed to increase our GeForce 8800 GTS performance by 14 per cent – nothing spectacular, but not bad for a couple of hours’ work. Be sure to monitor your GPU temperature and increase fan speeds if necessary. RivaTuner has everything you need to safely tweak both ATI and Nvidia video cards.

Find the bottleneck

If everything we’ve discussed so far still doesn’t get you close to the frame rates you need, your system may have a bottleneck that’s holding everything else up. Is your system RAM up to the task, for instance?

When equipped with only 2GB of generic DDR2 DIMMs, our test PC barely reached 20fps on the Crysis demo (1,600 x 1,200, high quality). We replaced these with 4GB of Crucial’s finest Ballistix offerings and frame rates went up by almost 25 per cent – not bad for an £80 to £90 outlay.

And that’s just the start – faster and more reliable RAM means you’ll probably be able to overclock your CPU further, too. A RAM upgrade didn’t offer the same benefits if we tried to run Crysis at the very highest-quality levels, though: the 2GB test returned 11.75fps, the 4GB a near-identical 11.915fps.

That’s because the graphics card is now the bottleneck. It simply couldn’t deliver acceptable performance at the settings we’d chosen.

As a last resort, then, you can always change your game settings. There’s usually an intimidating list of quality-related options, but tweaking just one or two of these will often be enough.

In Crysis, for instance, just changing the Shading Quality setting from ‘Very High’ to ‘Medium’ was enough to see our test PC’s 1,600 x 1,200 frame rate leap from 11.915fps to 23.61fps.

Although Crysis will by default use DirectX 10 when installed on Windows Vista and 7, switching to DirectX 9 gave us a further big performance jump to a new frame rate of 35.49fps. There’s no guarantee that other games with a similar option will see such a huge improvement, but it’s worth a try.

We finished by applying some of the techniques we mentioned earlier. Disabling PC resource hogs increased the frame rate by four per cent; turning off pointless services gave us a three per cent increase; using Process Lasso added more than five per cent; and overclocking returned an extra 14 per cent.

They’re small gains, but every little really does help, and the incremental effect meant that a previously unplayable game was now purring along at more than 45fps. That’s close to a 400 per cent improvement – a real result.

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Very often you may start noticing that your laptop works slower than usually. It might freeze or reboot for no reason or, even worse, you might see the blue screen. There are several reasons for this behavior. Your laptop might have Windows registry problem; hard drive might be experiencing some troubles or there is not enough memory for the needed application to run. Another reason might be poor Internet connection. Your laptop might also be infected with virus or spyware. You should also keep graphic card and processor speed in mind, if your laptop works slower.

In order to fix your slow laptop, you should first find out what exactly is working slowly. You should remember whether it has always been that slow. If it was slow the day you purchased it, then you probably bought a laptop that was not enough for your needs. The problem might be that simple and you might just need to buy a laptop with a faster processor.

If you use a lot of graphic applications on your laptop and this is the reason it is slow, then you should get a better graphic card and maybe add some more memory. In case you need to repair your graphic card look for Laptop Graphic Card Repair in London. Anyway, it is suggested that you looked at the system requirements of the applications you are running on your laptop.

If you notice that your laptop speed is low only when you are surfing the Internet, then the reason is poor connection. You should look for a better Internet provider. If you get a higher speed connection, you will enjoy your online surfing much more.

There are cases when laptops get slower with time, gradually, but it used to be working quite fast. If this is the case, then your laptop is probably infected with some kind of virus or spyware. A good antivirus protection should help with that problem. If your laptop has a virus, then it being slow might be only one problem. You might see other strange things happening with your laptop, which will make you reboot it quite often. That’s why it is wise to purchase good antivirus software, unless your laptop didn’t come with an installed trial version of some kind of antivirus protection.

If you have a corrupt Windows registry, you shouldn’t try and fix it yourself manually. Buy good registry repair software, which will save you time and headaches. But if you really want to save yourself time and headache, you should contact a good computer repair service. Laptops may have different kinds of problems and you don’t have to deal with them on your own. There are computer services for almost any laptop problem imaginable and if you need a VGA repair in London, you can definitely find it.

This article was written for High Impact SEO – the best place to find SEO Service.

PC Antispyware 2010 is one of the most common fake security clients in August of 09 and it’s still making tremendous inroads in September of 09 as well.These fake clients can do a to nof damage to ones computer.  With all the pop-ups and prompts asking you to purchase the program and the fake scans it’s easy to see how someone may fall victim to purchasing the fake client.

PC Antispyware 2010 Removal

To remove this threat you will need to run a full scan using your current security software.Many security clients out there now are able to detect this rouge application.  Keep in mind that you might now just be infected with this fake client.  You may also have several other trojans on your computer and that is why you should run a full security scan.  If you find that this is all you are infected with then your client should be able to remove it.  Worst case you can attempt to manually remove this trace.Here are a few pointers.

In order to Remove PC Antispyware 2010 you may need to update your current security software.  Many people who got infected with this in the first place got it from a fake video codec or plug-in.This by far is the most popular way people get infected.  If you did not manually install this threat then chances are you do have several other trojans on your computer and one of them went out and downloaded the program.

Worst case you can always call in a pro to remove this threat for you.  A good thing for this is to use a online line computer repair company.  They are often far cheap then calling a tech out to your home and far better than taking your computer to a shop and waiting a week to get the system back.

If you’d like to get hold of a top notch brand pc registry cleaner you may have to make a decision as to what kind of pc registry  solution you are looking for. I would say the zero cost kind belonging to the software program, or use the paid variation of the particular software? Browse through this registry cleaner comparison so that you can shop.

Here are a few a bit more useful points just for you.

The no cost personal computer registry cleaners existing are usually favorite since there’s no expense element that come with it. You may  choose one plus obtain the software by means of the very least headache and additionally utilize with regard to fixing your computer registry. However it’s not at all free of charge as a result of  the restriction too. These sort of free of charge computer registry cleaners attainable on the web happen to be at risk of harmful software  plus computer virus that might provide an undesirable effect on the total personal computer system as a whole.

Typically the no cost pc registry fix software available online, obscure inside them damaging trojan by means of  trojans or spy ware. As such, this particular trojans or the spyware actually is harmful for ones system. It is vital to  use a pc registry clean-up software programs on the recurrent schedule, in case your pc registry fix software program cannot  render the regular update versions the application has become out of date as well as of no use.

This can be a wrong presumption whereby people think that that reputed registry softwares cost a lot. Nevertheless it really is  far from the truth. It is usually much safer to make usage of the paid registry cleaner as they definitely have free of charge  alternatives.

Well known computer registry fixers offer you frequent updates both no cost or simply on reduced rates to their prospective buyers along with diminishing  possibility of changing into outdated. For the reason that provider makes earnings over the sale that results of these types of computer registry cleaners, they  have a desire to remain with the competitors thereby affording to provide this current program.

A reputable and well made and prominent computer registry cleaner is usually intuitive in addition to simple to use. It should be hassle-free  to run with self instructive options. It will need to have guide documents that are like helpful information for one. The software  includes a backup feature that may give the good back up to the actual pc registry as soon as you try to make any specific changes  within the computer system registry. When a thing gets deleted in error it can be reinstated.

It is vital that this computer registry cleaning package you might be utilising must be of respected product and ought to come  from a well-known supplier. In case you are buying the very best make that it is sure that your registry  applications are totally free of the entire malicious computer virus such as malware and even spyware.

For anyone who is not satisfied with the registry scanner that you’ve got tried using, you have all privileges to switch it as  well.

There is certainly a huge number of computer registry cleanup computer software on the market. Selecting the right source isn’t a time-consuming  job but the registry cleaners comparison can help. When you go through the reviews and act as per the  recommendations from the buyers who’re currently making use of all the registry cleaners, the choice of selecting  that registry cleaner becomes straight forward.

Wish to know which registry fix software our own study found to be the actual best of all? Need to get any sluggish  personal computer returning to maximum speed quickly? Try out Registry Easy and then begin to see the significant difference with your system’s  overall performance.

The iPad is a great new device and Apple have yet again outdone themselves.  I am sure you want to know how to   convert DVD movies to view on your iPad? Well this quick guide will show you exactly how to achieve that.

Firstly, you need to convert the DVD into a format that works with the iPad, which is MP4 (mpeg 4) or H.264 video. Don’t worry too much about the technical details, because the software will do pretty much all of the hard work.

In order to perform the conversion and get it onto your iPad, you will need a DVD to iPad converter and iTunes. I will assume that you already have iTunes installed, since you are using an iPad already. Step one of the process is performing the conversion, after this we need to get the file into iTunes, so that it can be synced and added to your iPad for later viewing.

It’s time to start the DVD to iPad conversion process.

1. You have downloaded and installed DVD to iPad converter from the link above. Note: there are other good converters, but the Cucusoft is our favorite.
2. Insert the DVD you want converted (you can also convert almost any video type with this converter)
3. Open the DVD via Dvd to iPad converter, and select open DVD, or you can manually select a vob file yourself
4. Choose the title you wisth to convert, the largest file size and duration will be the movie
5. Set any optional preferences, we recommend defaults for starters
6. Click convert

Now that is pretty easy, and it doesn’t take long to get video onto your iPad. Depending on computer specs and the size of the video, it could take a little time to complete.

Now to get the converted video file onto your iPad using iTunes.

1. Fire up iTunes
2. Keep the “Manually manage music and videos” unchecked
3. Click the File menu, select “Add File to Library”
4. Choose the file you just converted
5. Under “Movies”, you will be able to right click on the file and select “Get info”, now you can select the “Video Kind”. This should put it in the related playlist.
6. From the File menu, select “Sync iPad”
7. The video should now be available on your iPad

You can now watch your favorite video, anytime from your iPad. You can find out more about DVD to iPad converters here, as well as other conversion techniques.

In today’s world there are so many technological inventions, in all fields, that it has become quite hard for the ordinary man to choose the appropriate item, device, piece of equipment or computer if there is no specialist available to advise him/her. For example, in the PC domain, the latest developments have been so numerous and advanced that even people who have an idea of what is what and of how to deal with computers and their accessories, might be at a loss about what purchase to make. With the impressive multitude of companies and products, there is no wonder that people have come up with all kinds of classifications and tops in as far as the best notebooks are concerned. A buyer who is determined to search for a right product, should go through a pretty wide range of best computer tops so as to have an idea which is the upper reference point.

Where can you find the right information, specifications and other technical data or purchasing information with regard to the best notebooks?Once again the Internet comes up as the answer since there is no other major source of reviews, technical tops and computer specifications than this computer dimension that is the world wide web. There are incredibly many websites designed by different manufacturers and dealers that are full of best notebooks classifications meant to influence the buyers’ decision. Other blogs and niches specialize in reviews of computers and laptops and the necessary accessories as well. The site collaborators are either experts in the field and you can rely on the information they provide, or they are amateurs who make reviews after performing researches in their turn.

There are well reputed sites that provide accurate best notebooks categories and the main suggestions would go for laptopical.com, pcworld.com, ZN Net Australia, reviews.cnet.uk, laptopreviewsonline, laptopmag.com, or reviews.cnet.com, but the list could go on. Anyway we need to pass the warning once more that you do not trust reviews written by people without technical expertise for support.

So as to strike a great deal, do not overlook the importance of the capacity or technical features when reading best notebooks reviews. Usually, quality sites which provide data about best notebooks, offer you details regarding the size, design, graphics, price and battery life. Besides, you will also be given information regarding the productivity performance, keyboard comfortability, touchpad use, the number of USB ports, the peculiarity of the operating systems, the hard drive speed and storage capacity and so on and so forth. Trust good brad names for maximum success!

The story takes place a few years after the end of Splinter Cell: Double Agent. . Sam’s daughter was killed, he murdered his best friend Lambert, and he split from Third Echelon, the government agency he’d called home for years. With new evidence leading to his daughter’s killer, a tormented and semi-retired Sam Fisher is called back into action. Turns out the people responsible for his daughter’s fate are planning a major terrorist attack on Washington D.C.

Mark and execute is fun and easy to use, and doesn’t ruin the Splinter Cell experience in any way, but it has to be said that once the later levels begin to open up, it never quite feels natural to go out of your way to melee kill someone to simply earn the right to use the Mark and execute feature at a later stage. Normally, you rely on silenced weapons and various grenade types, Fisher’s deadly enough without the need for the feature.

Later in the game you will encounter missions that will force to be sneak through without being seen this is realistic but too often it feels as though your punishment for being spotted is that Conviction becomes a far worse game. By the end of the short 5 hour single-player campaign, the heavy emphasis on unavoidable shoot-outs ensures that its best moments were experienced in the first few hours.

Ubisoft has chosen to simplify the stealth elements introduced into previous games by making it more action oriented (Think Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer).The pacing of the game remises that of the action TV series `24′ and also `The Bourne Conspiracy’ for gruesome close quarter combat and general action elements.

Splinter Cell is a series renowned for it’s hardcore stealth elements. It’s won awards, it’s taken on Metal Gear Sold for it’s crown, but how far does Splinter Cell: Conviction  come to achieving the next generation leap over it’s predecessor Double Agent? Well, in term’s of graphic’s it’s a step down from Double Agent’s gorgeous layered multiple textures, special effects, and slick animations that made Double agent a sight to behold . Alas this is all gone in Conviction replaced with poor facial animation , low polygon count character models and a very poor art design that shout’s out generic!

Incoming search terms for the article:

• splinter cell conviction tweaking guide

If you’ve had your computer for a while, and you haven’t been repairing its registry, your computer may suffer from slowdowns or sluggish performance. In most instances, a simple cleaning of the registry will do the trick in contributing to restore your PC to its former performance level. If you are willing to spend a few dollars to obtain a quality product from a respected software developer, you will need to know some simple criteria about finding a superior registry cleaner software that fits your needs.

In the first place, the best registry cleaners have the ability to remove invalid entries. Invalid entries are outdated registry entries that just end up cluttering the registry with unneeded and invalid data. These entries occur, for example, when you move a file from one folder in your “My Documents” section to another folder. Each time you move a file from one spot (or folder) to another, an entry is produced in the registry, notifying the computer where to find the file. If you don’t clear your registry of the old entries, they end up cluttering the registry with obsolete entries.

Invalid entries also appear when, for instance, you download some program that you end up not using and therefore deleting from your Program Listing in the Control Panel. While the program itself gets erased from your PC, the registry entry that told your machine where to find the program is still there, cluttering up the registry.

There are other examples of obsolete entries which can occur when your computer is receiving automatic updates to software, and the entries are entered temporarily for the machine to be able to perform the actions needed. Meaning that registry entries are being created and updated all the time in the background, and you need an option to manage this process so that it doesn’t affect the future performance of your machine. Having a reliable registry cleaner is the only sensible way to do this.

A second factor one needs to be aware of is making certain that the registry repair software you select has a backup feature included with it. While all the best registry fix programs include a backup feature, they all do so for a reason. Sometimes, though not often, they error in removing a vital registry entry which may have been critical to the performance of your computer system. And you need a way to repair that entry in such an event. Virtually all computer professionals create and use registry backups for their own computers, and you need to be able to do so also.

This has been only a hasty rundown of a couple of areas you need to be aware of when searching for a top registry cleaner. If you need help in choosing just which software will suit your needs best, then click one of the links in this article and take advantage of the professional research provided there. Reading the product reviews, you will see that each brand has been completely tested, and the results and analysis are available there to aid you in your own analysis and decision-making process.

Buy the G27 Here

Logitech G27 Racing Wheel

2x the force
You feel your car’s weight shift and tires slip thanks to the dual-motor force feedback with helical gearing. Learn more about the gear that gets you there.

Shift your way
You can quickly select the correct gear with either the six-speed shifter or the F1-style paddles.

Six-speed shifter
You can quickly select exactly the right gear for the turn or the straightaway. The push-down reverse gear lets you back up realistically.Serious about sim games? Learn how Logitech peripherals make sim games more real.

RPM/shift indicator LEDs
Keeping an eye on the indicator panel lets you know just when to shift gears for maximum torque (in supported games).

Hand-stitched leather
The 28 cm wheel is wrapped in real leather to help keep your hands comfortable from the start line to the checkered flag.

Steel gas, brake, and clutch pedals
Sturdy true-to-life pedals deliver precise throttle, braking, and shifting control for heightened realism.

900-degree wheel rotation
You can go 2.5 times around lock to lock—just as you would behind the wheel of many real cars.

16 programmable buttons plus D-pad
You can map useful game functions to locations that make sense to you—whether on the wheel itself or on the shift module.

Custom tuned for popular games
There are no dead zones or lag, so you’ll see and feel every bit of wheel movement reflected in-game.

Optical encoding
You’ll enjoy reliable and accurate handling race after race after race.

Carpet grip system
Retractable teeth flip down to keep the pedals from sliding around on carpeting.

Steel ball bearings
Two sets of solid steel ball bearings support the wheel shaft for superb performance and long-term reliability.

Hard points
All three components (wheel console, pedals, and shifter module) can be bolted to a table other surface for a solid racing experience.

Specifications

Colour Colour of product: Input device Device type Reflex vibration D-pad Connectivity technology Buttons quantity System requirements Compatible operating systems Minimum hard disk space Minimum RAM Minimum system requirements Technical details Compatibility Interface

Black

Wheel + Pedals

Yes

Yes

Wired

16

Win XP/Vista/7

20MB

256MB

CD-ROM

PS2, PS3

USB

 

TECHDNA83726192

This article will attempt to outline the problems that many organizations face with their network today, and identify methods that Exinda and our x60 WAN Optimization appliances use to provide exceptional control of misbehaving  network traffic, recreational application traffic and other non business critical network traffic that consumes scarce network bandwidth.

The top problems that organizations are trying to solve

1. User experience / customer satisfaction - User complaints about the speed of the network.
2. Application issues - Specific applications performing slowly (ie - student registration system, off-campus access, CRM, backups, centralization/consolidation/virtualisation efforts etc)
3. Rising network costs - I am running out of bandwidth. When do I need to buy more, and how much do I need?
4. Aggressive and/or recreational applications - Certain users or user groups are eating up the bandwidth which causes problems for other users.
5. Productivity - Measuring time wasted by employees and helping to remedy.

Savvy network managers therefore are looking to provide users with the best network experience possible by maximizing the speed and efficiency of their applications over wide area networks (WAN). In discussions with our customers we have identified a series of requirements that seem to be almost universal in nature.  These clients not only need to ensure that business-critical application(s) perform at acceptable levels of service, and can benefit from the maximum application performance possible they have determined that their WAN Optimization solution should: 

• Serve environments with the ability and/or need to run bandwidth-eating applications on the network where controlling access and even blocking access as needed is an absolute requirement. 
• Serve a variety of users with a wide range of application requirements. 
• Be deployable by organizations with a limited number or no dedicated IT staff serving multiple locations, wearing multiple hats, without the luxury of time to focus on the network. 
• Be suitable for an organization needing an affordable and complete solution for WAN performance issues with multiple locations having applications utilizing a WAN 

Exinda’s unified performance management (UPM) solution brings together a suite of advanced, best-of-breed, visibility, traffic-shaping and WAN optimization technologies into a single, easy to-use appliance designed to improve network productivity. Exinda is the only Unified Performance Management solution on the market. Unified Performance Management provides users with a tightly integrated, cost saving solution to getting the most out of your network. All controlled through a unified management console the Service Delivery Point a cloud computing based network management system.  

An organization that opts for an Exinda x60 WAN Optimization platform running our ExOS 5.4 software should experience the following improvements in WAN performance:

Reduce set-up time by 50% to 80%, for multi-site WAN optimization deployments. 
Exinda’s auto discovery and configuration turns a problem that once took days and hours, into a solution that takes just minutes. 

Exinda drastically simplifies deployment of WAN optimization technology. Exinda’s intelligent architecture provides Exinda appliances with the ability to recognize one another, share configuration settings and automatically sync to accelerate traffic and improve network efficiency.

This means no longer needing to… 

• manually create tunnels between devices, 
• reconfigure QoS policies, 
• apply changes to clients, servers, routers, or IP addresses in order to accelerate traffic between devices. 

Exinda is smart enough to do the work for you.

Reduce up to 90% of WAN data.
Exinda’s universal WAN memory cache removes repetitive data from being resent over the WAN. The overall reduction in traffic increases application speed and frees up bandwidth.

Make the most out of de-duplication efforts and deliver warm pass results bi directionally without the need to partition disk space at each branch office or endpoint.

The universal cache also improves storage efficiency on all Exinda devices.

Improve Delivery Time 50-100x
Improve data delivery 50 to 100 times. Since data is now accessed locally from the disk cache, users now experience LAN speeds over the WAN.

Improved TCP Delivery (Layer 4 Optimization)
Mitigate the negative impact high latency has on TCP delivery. Exinda uses the latest in layer 4 optimization techniques to ensure fast and consistent TCP transmissions.

These techniques allow Exinda users to bypass traditional TCP problems where it will not send additional data until an acknowledgement is provided from the other side of the transmission.

Techniques used include: TCP window scaling, selective, local, and delayed acknowledgements, packet aggregation, TCP fast start, and the ability to implement control mechanisms to reduce network congestion.

Technical Benefits of a UPM solution include:

• Reduction in packet loss & retransmissions 
• Improved performance through reduction in acknowledgements required from packets 
• Improved congestion control across a variety of network environments 
• Increased connection throughput early into the connection 
• Increased speed in packet transmission through acknowledgment of multiple packets at a time 

Reduce User Experienced Latency (Layer 7 Application Acceleration)
Exinda uses a variety of techniques to improve the efficiency of WAN communications and advance a network user’s experience. The use of Layer 7 application acceleration, encompassing methods such as compression, prefetch data, and local cache, allow Exinda to reduce an application’s footprint on the network and improve usability.
In my next posting I plan to outline some of the visibility attributes of an Exinda x60 and ExOS 5.4 enabled Unified Performance Management solution.