Woah, who slammed on the brakes? Your computer used to speed through
startup and let you open almost everything at once, but now it’s struggling to
crawl along! Everything takes so much longer or crashes without warning.
Something isn’t right. If it’s gotten so bad that you’ve found yourself
drooling over the idea of a new computer, even though your system isn’t that
old, we’ve got some good news: you can
get your whizzy speeds back with a little TLC.
Computers generally start slowing down within 12 months, but it’s not
because their parts are broken. And it’s not because they’re faulty. It’s not
even because you have so many browser tabs open that you lose count. Slow
computers have a number of causes, but the most common ones are easily fixed.
Background programs
Whenever your computer is turned on, it’s running programs in the
background. You didn’t start them and they may not be essential to operation,
but off they go anyway. You can’t even see some of them, they don’t have
windows or anything to look at. A good
example is your antivirus program. You don’t need to see it all the time, but
you know it’s running in the background, protecting you. Over time, more and
more programs might slip into the background and casually suck up your
resources, like iTunes helper, Acrobat updater, Cortana listening, Skype or
Spotify. We can speed up your system by
setting these background programs to run only when you need them, or remove
them completely.
Application bloat
How do you improve last year’s version of a program? Add more features!
The problem with this is the applications become bloated with features you may
not need (or even know about), but that keep needing more and more resources.
Each time the developers review their programs, they assume you’ve bought the
latest and greatest computer and can run whatever they release. This means a
slow computer can sneak up after an auto-update. You may not even know the
update happened, just that your computer is suddenly making you very unhappy.
Eventually, your system grinds to a halt. We can remove unused applications or
increase your computer power as required.
Slow hard drives
Your data is stored on a part called the hard drive. It’s usually a
mechanical type that works like a record player, with a spinning platter and a
‘needle’ reading it. If your data is spread out across lots of places on the
platter, the hard drive head 'needle' has to go backwards and forwards
thousands of times just to retrieve a single file. Unsurprisingly,
that takes more time to bring up your file. We can optimize your data
to give the hard drive head a break, but an even better solution is to
upgrade to an SSD. That’s a Solid State Drive that stores data in memory chips,
like your USB drive, and has no moving parts. Without the physical need to move
a hard drive needle, your computer can access data much faster.
Unfortunately, once your computers starts slowing, for whatever reason,
the problem only gets worse. The background programs will continue to multiply,
the bloat keeps coming, and the hard drive begs for relief. Rather than buy a whole new system though,
it’s completely possible for your current computer to go back to being
lightning fast – and for a fraction of the cost.
Would you like us to
give your computer a new lease on life? Call 855-302-9274 or email info@bovaconsulting.com
