Tools & Utilities
A good disk defragmentation utility is always a precious asset if you wish to keep your hard drives working at maximum performance. Saving and deleting files on the hard drive results in free space between the files, so every time you want to store a new file, the system will place it in the first available space it finds. If the file is bigger than that first found space, the system will fragment it and store those fragments in other free locations it comes across. In the end the file will probably end up scattered across your hard drive and when you try to access it, the process will be slower as the hard drive’s read/write heads are forced to move over different areas instead of accessing the file sequentially.
Smart Defrag is currently one of the fastest and efficient disk defragmentation tools incorporating an assembly of useful features for hard disk maintenance such as scheduled and automatic defragmentation, analyze fragmentation level for specific files/folders and the advanced “Boot Time Defrag” technology.
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Norton Ghost is a widely recognized utility that receives great appreciation for providing its users with such an effortless solution for file and system backup/recovery, bundled with a versatile set of tools to deliver all one would expect and even more.
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One of the most common obsessions of gamers is testing their computer’s performance because it’s just not enough to choose all hardware parts for their system after reading documentation and performing extensive comparisons between products. On a more amateurish note, even non-gamers that upgraded their system or purchased a brand new one might wish to see a full assessment of their computer’s capabilities just to make sure it does what it says.
3DMark Vantage is a state of the art benchmarking software, currently trusted by gamers from all around the world, thanks to its nice bundle of features and accurate testing results. Moreover the free edition is a reliable solution to perform a basic set of straightforward tests if you don’t wish to spend money for such a program.
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While most of the times computers work just fine on their own there are some situations in which we need to get our hands dirty and have a look inside to gather necessary information. Fortunately, the software industry gives us solutions for retrieving system information in a more comfortable manner.
In plain English, a good benchmark and diagnosis utility can provide a ton of data about our system, way more than our own eyes could notice. Such an application is the acclaimed AIDA64 Extreme Edition, formerly known as EVEREST, a benchmarking tool designed for Windows, capable of delivering a wide range of information about our system’s hardware and internal temperatures but also system stability testing, hardware error diagnosis, performance assessments and a bunch of other useful functions.
Let’s engage ourselves in a fun little ‘experiment” and take a few steps back in order to look at the PC user community world-wide. Now, one of the most interesting noticeable traits is that there are at least two types of PC users, and these two most distinctive categories are formed by those who are interested in how their hardware works, and those who are interested in their hardware to work, period.
Most likely, an individual who resides in the second category is in the possession of a more practical personality and wishes to be able to drive the car at work safely and in time without having to know what’s going on under the hood, fire-up the office computer and in case something goes wrong, kindly leave it in the hands of those who are qualified to fix it. I agree, this is a cerebral practice and in most of the cases it saves a lot of time and trouble, but does it always?
When it comes to the condition of our data which resides quietly on our computer’s HDD, it’s necessary or at least advisable to keep things in an orderly fashion so that whenever we might happen to look for something, we can find it without being forced to “dig” into a pile of forgotten files and folders. There is no doubt that most of you are able to keep your computers well organized but, how much do you know about what’s behind all that facade?
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Setting up a network has been quite a hassle since the early days of networking, and it’s still a bit of a headache under certain circumstances. Hardware and software altogether have suffered many changes in the past decade or so, and we are now able to create networks with more ease than ever. Nevertheless there are many cases in which we are still encountering all sorts of difficulties when it comes to creating and detecting our network or certain computers/IP addresses, but fortunately, there is a solution to this problem.
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The ability to store data on optical disks is vital to anyone who uses a computer. Whether it’s about storing your finest pictures and movies or making backups to your documents and programs, burning disks is the cornerstone which enables us to coexist with our electronics.
It doesn’t take much time to realize this but in order for hardware to run properly, there is always the need of good software. The software and the hardware are like the Yin and Yang of technology, and this is a valid point when it comes to burning optical disks as well. There’s not much of a hassle to buy a decent optical drive or to pick a good brand for optical disks, but it’s somewhat troublesome when it comes to finding a good burning software that can yield great results without too much effort.
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