Get That New PC Feeling Back: Educating Users on Computer Maintenance

Online, September 28, 2010 (Newswire.com) - This article discusses the best ways to gain peace of mind when it comes to maintaining your PC and using utilities software. It also includes results from a recent TuneUp research study, conducted online by Harris Interactive, about PC users' computer maintenance habits. Find out how you can make your PC perform to its highest potential!

A research study, commissioned by TuneUp and conducted online by Harris Interactive®, has shown the need to educate PC users about how to keep their computers in top shape. Many home users purchased new computers due to slow speed or poor performance, but very few understand the basic maintenance and optimization steps that can be taken to improve their systems.

Respondents think the best way to keep their PCs performing at their best is by running anti-virus scans (90%), removing files or software to free up disk space (77%), or defragmenting disks (76%), but then they're surprised when they still have to replace their computers after just three or four years.

While these steps do help, they're only a small part of what users can do to get that out-of-the-box performance back. If users want true performance, the following techniques are proven to effectively soup-up Windows 7, XP and Vista.

•Turn off unwanted start-up programs to streamline the Windows start-up process.
•Disable unnecessary background functionalities and maintenance tasks to eliminate performance drains.
•Concentrate PCs' performance only on the programs that users actively use. By allowing their PCs to concentrate entirely on the tasks at hand, users will see fewer interruptions and faster response rates.
•Defragment the disk with intelligent software that knows which programs users use often and that optimizes hard disks to launch them more quickly. This also helps increase the transfer rate when opening, copying and moving files, and improves the start-up time for Windows.

How should users know what parts of Windows are not needed, let alone know how to turn something off? Even the most advanced users are not able to perform file defragmentation by hand or focus their PCs' priority on current active tasks. And even if they could, it would take ages and eat up so much time on a regular basis. This is why all-in-one utilities software can be useful to have. Surprisingly, the research showed that only one-third of respondents have ever tried running utilities software.

By educating PC users about the benefits of utilities software, the 77% of respondents who are unsure or do not currently use such tools could very well save money and the effort of buying new PCs. Instead, they could make their old computers run as good as new-and in most cases, even better than they performed before.