This chapter provides an introduction to cleaning Windows
— to making it work efficiently. Optimization doesn’t necessarily
mean faster. Sometimes optimization means making the operating system
more reliable or easier to access. All users require a certain level
of support before they become productive and work efficiently. Creating
a plan that helps you maintain balance as you optimize the system
is important. In addition, a good plan helps you keep on track and
not optimize areas that don’t provide some kind of payback.
You already know at least one optimizing tactic from
this chapter (and perhaps more). Try turning off the Themes services
for a while to see if you can live without it. Many people find that
they don’t miss themes support at all — that the standard interface
elements work just fine. For example, you can still use wallpaper,
but you don’t necessarily have access to every kind of wallpaper and
Windows won’t resize it for you. The idea is to find areas that have
a minimal impact on the way you work and a maximum impact on how well
your system performs.
Chapter 3 is the first serious hands on look at optimization.
In Chapter 3, you begin cleaning the hard drive, which can be a lot
more work than you imagined. The hard drive can hide all kinds of
useless data, temporary files, and data that you should have archived
long ago. The important aspect of cleaning the hard drive is to provide
space for other needs such as a larger swap file, fresh data, or the
latest download from the Internet.