| A recent essay called Silicon Valley's Green Detente | | | | boost performance to increase memory to the |
| highlights the new trend in computing designed to | | | | maximum allowed for a particular machine. |
| assist in fighting climate change and other crucial | | | | 3. Make sure anti-virus and anti-spyware programs |
| energy issues. After warring for years over | | | | are installed, running and up-to-date. Viruses and |
| browsers, hardware and operating systems, Silicon | | | | especially spyware can work insidiously, unseen inside |
| Valley is finally uniting on a single point: IT must | | | | a computer, drastically hindering performance. Of |
| become more energy efficient. With energy usage | | | | course, if not caught, viruses can do much worse |
| now on a par of importance with performance, | | | | than hinder performance, so it behooves everyone |
| maintaining existing performance now becomes a | | | | to insure reliable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs |
| paramount issue. Below are some important | | | | are installed and running. |
| performance tips common to computer systems and | | | | 4. Reduce number of running programs. Checking |
| sites large and small for use in the new "green | | | | over servers and especially user systems, how |
| computing" era. | | | | important is it that all those programs are running? |
| 1. Defragment hard drives. A primary--and extremely | | | | Any running program will be chipping away at |
| common--barrier to performance is disk file | | | | precious system resources, especially CPU and |
| fragmentation, in which files are split into pieces | | | | memory. It behooves computer sites to implement |
| (fragments) in order to maximize disk space. Regular | | | | policies and restrictions on applications to be run, and |
| defragmentation is vital and is performed at most | | | | to periodically check running applications to see how |
| computer sites. With today's enormous disk | | | | necessary they really are. |
| capacities and file sizes, however, attention must also | | | | 5. Install faster hard drives. Another sometimes |
| be paid to the defragmentation technology. | | | | unseen hindrance to performance is hard drive speed. |
| Scheduled defragmentation, in most cases, can no | | | | Although the hard drive is still the "weakest link" in |
| longer keep up with ever-escalating fragmentation | | | | terms of speed, gaining all possible speed from |
| rates, and sites would find greater benefit from a | | | | drives, especially those most frequently accessed, |
| defragmenter which runs constantly and | | | | can assist in the fight for better performance. |
| automatically, in the background, with no impact on | | | | It of course benefits us all to contribute in the fight |
| system resources. | | | | to global climate change by "going green" with more |
| 2. Increase memory. Today's operating systems and | | | | energy-efficient computers. While being energy |
| applications are, in common parlance, "resource hogs", | | | | efficient, you can also maximize performance by |
| and they'll take as much memory as you throw at | | | | instituting these and other performance-enhancing |
| them. Hence, it is always worthwhile and will always | | | | actions. |