5 Ways to make your laptop work faster
Over time, every laptop wears out. It could be with speed or just overall performance. In this blog, we tried to highlight 5 interesting ways by which you can make your laptop work faster. Yes, it actually works.
We are living in an era of technology. It is at its most advanced stage, that too. We have been introduced to countless new technologies and devices. These devices have not only made our daily lives easier but also play an important part on a bigger scale for firms, industries, and even a whole country. Smartphones are a prime example of it. A lot of our daily tasks are done with the help of a smartphone today. Be it texting your friends or sending an important file to the office. Smartphones have developed immensely and quickly. They are incredibly powerful but one gadget that will always a spot higher than them is a PC or a laptop. PCs and laptops have been popular for decades and are used for various purposes. But for people who have to regularly move from one place to another, a laptop is the favored choice.
There are many brands of laptops with different types and specifications in their models. Buying a best multipurpose laptop itself can get hard given the number of choices. Their countless models are capable of doing great things. However, like everything in this world, a laptop is not permanent. It is a machine and over time it begins to slow down. There can be various reasons for that, both hardware or software. Here are various ways that help you restore and boost your laptop’s speed.
MacBook Retina Display in the dark
Manage Storage
The storage and the hard drives of a laptop are its heart. Clean and healthy storage is a must for the laptop to work smooth and fast. Be it a PC, laptop, smartphone, or any such device; their basic functionality begins to malfunction as they begin to run out of storage. Full or near-full storage can bring down a laptop’s whole performance down by a big margin. It is important to keep a good amount of storage free on your device. It is advised to keep at least %15 of your whole storage free all the time for a smooth performance.
To do so, unwanted and redundant files should be cleared. First, you can run the Disk Cleanup tool and clear all drives of such files. Disk Cleanup can be easily found by a simple search in the taskbar.
Deleting Temp files is another way of boosting a laptop’s device. To find them, you have to go to the Run command by pressing the Windows button and the letter R. Next you have to enter %temp%. It will lead you to a folder with several files and folders. Permanently deleting all of them will surely provide a boost.
You should also uninstall programs that you do not use. This can be done by going to Control Panel and then Programs. More than one program can not be uninstalled at the same time in the older version of Windows but the newer ones like Windows 10 do have that capability.
Defragment Disks
Fragmentation in the hard drive is something that a casual user might not be aware of. It is considered to be the main culprit in most of the cases of a slowdown. We all know that whenever a change is made to the storage i.e creating, editing, or deleting a file, the information is stored on the drive. As there are usually a lot of tasks going on in a laptop, the data gets split and it ends up getting stored in different locations. Then whenever that specific data is to be accessed, the processor has to visit more data locations which take longer than usual. This is called fragmentation and this is how it slows down the whole device. It keeps getting worse and the processing keeps getting slower as more and more time goes on. This is why a regular disk defrag is advised for users. Defragger collects those data and puts them all together where they are supposed to be. Disk defragmentation is easy and there is no need for downloading any third-party software. There is a pre-installed Disk Defrag in every laptop and PC. You can find it by simply searching for it in the taskbar. Once you are inside the program, you can select any of your disks for defragging. The software will first analyze if the disk needs defragging and shows how fragmented it is. The disks shouldn’t be more fragmented than 5%. The process of defragging can take a lot of time if you haven’t been doing it regularly. But when it’s done, your device is guaranteed to be faster than before.
Keep Antivirus and Firewall Updated
Bloatware, malware, and various viruses are extremely harmful to any device. Not only do they pose a serious harm to your privacy and security but they also bring down the whole performance of your laptop. If a whole lot of this stuff gets accumulated on your laptop, it won’t just slow it down. It will make the laptop completely unusable. Which is why it is always good to have a reliable antivirus running on your system. There are many choices you get for selecting an antivirus. Names like Avast and Kaspersky are two very trustworthy names when we talk about anti-viruses. Most of the anti-viruses are paid and do often some services for free. Paying for an antivirus and buying it legally should be the only option. Not only because pirating is illegal but also because downloading them off torrents or other websites can introduce more viruses to your system. Many hackers camouflage trojan viruses in form of these free software. People fall for the “free” tag and end up leaving their security at risk.
MacBook on a table
A lot of people do not trust the anti-viruses altogether either.
It leaves the Windows Defender to be the best protection for your laptop if you do not want an antivirus. Regularly checking for updates for the Defender is necessary for protection against newer viruses. When you have them updated, it is advised to keep running a deep scan every once in a while.
Hardware Upgrades and Maintenance
If doing all of the above steps doesn’t bring any results at all, the hardware might be the problem instead of the software. As devices get older, their components wear out because of the usage. A time comes when they just can not take up the duties of their supposed tasks anymore. This is when you should replace them with better versions. RAMs, hard drives, and the fan are usually what affect the performance.
Upgrading the RAM is the simplest measure you can take for boosting your laptop’s performance. If you want to execute demanding programs and want to multitask, 8 GB of RAM is a must. There are various types of RAM and DDR3 RAM is what’s the minimum requirement today.
The hard drive is another component that majorly affects the overall performance. You should not only be looking for an upgrade in size but the type as well. The days of the traditional Hard Disk Drives are gone. Solid State Drives are taking over and all for good reason. They are incredibly fast, being over 5 times faster than an HDD. If your device still has an HDD, consider upgrading to an SSD.
Physical damage to these components can be fatal as well and so can be dust accumulation. Make sure to keep your laptop safe and clean.
Miscellaneous
Softwares that keep running in the background without a purpose are the enemies of your performance. So are the automatic updates. Keep track of the running background programs with the Task Manager and disable all possible automatic updates from Windows or other programs.
Startup programs are other major factors that can hurt a device’s performance. Whenever you start your laptop, it has to spend some memory in loading the programs that start running automatically. Turning all startup programs will certainly help save a lot of memory. You can easily look for all the startup programs from the Control Panel and turn them off.
ReadyBoost is a feature in Windows that a lot of people do not know about. It is the appropriate solution for those who can not afford big RAM upgrades. ReadyBoost allows you to use any flash drive as a temporary RAM for your laptop. The bigger the flash drive, the better the performance. However, it formats the whole flash drive so make sure to not keep any important data on it.
Sometimes, reinstalling your OS can help improve a device’s performance too.
Laptops have always been powerful devices and they are getting even better and better every day. Their improved features and performance has made them an integral part of both casual and professional level. The choice between gaming laptops vs normal laptops is very difficult to differentiate and most of the people choose the wrong ones. Many people use it to watch movies while some work from home for a full job through a laptop entirely. Their performance can begin to wear down because of various issues. When it happens, the above 5 tips are a must. But if nothing, it means there is an irreparable problem. If it is so, it’s time to bite the bullet and buy a new one.
