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What is Prefetching

Link Prefetching is a concept introduced by Firefox and Google as late as 2005, but still many people do not know much about it. Link Prefetching actually is a mechanism through which Firefox utilizes some of its idle time to prefetch web pages, which it thinks your are likely to visit next from the currently open web page. After the current web page has finished loading and some idle time has passed, Firefox starts link prefetching and silently loads the next probable page in its cache. The purpose of Link Prefetching is to enhance your user experience by quickly load your next page by serving it quickly out out of Firefox Cache.

Google has been supporting Link Prefetching, and when you search for any keyword in Google through Firefox, the first link displayed gets prefetched to your browser cache.

But, Is Link Prefetching always Good ?

Link Prefetching feature of Firefox looks nice on the face of it, as it speeds up your Browsing speed by utilizing your idle time.

But there is a lot of criticism against Link Prefetching by Firefox. Some of the issues are…

• Users who pay for the amount of bandwidth they use find themselves paying for traffic for pages they might not even visit.
• Webmasters who pay for the amount of outgoing traffic on their sites, are forced to pay for traffic generated by people who may never actually visit their sites.
• Advertisers pay for viewed ads on sites that are never visited (non-compliant prefetching)
• Browser usage statistics may get skewed towards browsers that implement prefetching.
• Search engine referer statistics may get skewed towards search engines that implement prefetching.
• Web site statistics may become less reliable due to registering page hits that were never seen by the user.
• Users may be exposed to more security risks - by downloading more pages, or from un-requested sites (additionally compounded as drive-by downloads become more advanced and diverse).
• Users may find themselves at legal risk if illegal content is prefetched. So, the choice is yours.

If you prefer to Disable Link Prefetching, then proceed as follows.

How to Disable Link Prefetching in Firefox

Firefox has the Link Prefetching feature ON by default, and there is no option in the Firefox properties Dialog Box, which allows you to disable Link Prefetching. You have to do it manually by editing the about:config entries. Follow these steps for that.

1. Open the Firefox browser
2. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter
3. Scroll down the resulting preference list to network.prefetch-next
4. Double click network.prefetch-next so the value is set to false.
5. Close Firefox and restart it to enable the change.

How to Enable Link Prefetching for all Links on a webpage

In case, you are an ardent supporter of Link Prefetching, there is a nice Firefox Extension. You can use Fasterfox, which has an option to enable the prefetching of all page links by the browser.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

The File System, in which Windows stores your files on the hard disk is a crucial factor in determining the time taken to retrieve it. And it goes without saying that it is important to select the correct file system for making windows run faster.

Windows uses two file systems to manage files on your hard disks. FAT32 and NTFS.
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FAT32 vs NTFS

What is NTFS File System

NTFS (New Technology File System) is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. NTFS has several improvements over FAT32 such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization, plus additional extensions such as security access control lists etc. A boot disk to boot NTFS drive is called an NTFS Boot Disk.

What is FAT File system

The File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is an older file system that relies on an allocation table to keep track of files and folders on a volume

Because of the various features, NTFS is a superior way to organize files as compared to the FAT32, and it definitely makes your windows run faster to convert FAT to NTFS. There are several reasons why to change a FAT file system to NTFS. You can easily search for them on Google.

How to Speed up Windows by Converting Hard Drive from FAT32 to NTFS

Converting FAT32 to NTFS is quick and easy. A few simple steps and your NTFS conversion is complete to make windows faster. Let’s see how to do that.

Click Start > Run.

Type diskmgmt.msc > OK. This will give information about various disks installed installed on your PC. See which disk you want to convert from FAT32 to NTFS.

Again Click Start > Run.

Type cmd  > OK to open the command prompt.

Type convert c: /fs:ntfs so as to convert drive c: to NTFS.

Repeat the same command for other drives.

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

If you are my type of Windows users, you will be using and testing new programs very often. Most of these programs try to install in such a way so as to get listed in the startup folder and initialize every time Windows boots. If you allow this to happen, this soon creates a situation, when your system tray is full of different kinds of icons, and your RAM of full of these programs, whether you currently are using that program or not.

It is a big drain on your precious system resources and it is better to optimize the programs which should find place in your startup folder.

How to reduce the Startup Programs to increase Windows speed

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A few simple steps…

• Click Start > Run.
• Type msconfig > OK
• Click on the Startup tab.
• Disable those programs that you do not want to startup on boot up
• Save the settings

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

Indexing service is a feature of Windows, which consumes of lots of system resources and RAM. The purpose of indexing services of Windows is to index files and folders in your Hard Disk so as to speed up their searching. But, in practice, it has been seen that most people do not use these services, and it is often very helpful to run Windows faster, if you consider to disable these services.

How you can disable indexing services to run Windows faster

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Few simple steps…

• Click Start > Control Panel.
• Open Add or Remove Programs
• Click on Add or Remove Windows Components
• Uncheck the Indexing Service
• Complete the process

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

Windows is a complex system. It has been designed to suite many individual needs. Some of its features and services are not used by the common users, but are a drain on important system resources. There are many other services, which have resulted over a period of your use but are not in use at present. It is better to disable them all. This is one of the most important tasks, when you seek to improve the performance of Windows and run it faster.

How to disable Windows services to run Windows faster

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A few simple steps…

1. Right click on My Computer.
2. Click on Manage
3. Click on Services and Applications
4. Select Services / Standard tab
5. Here you will find a lot of services, which are currently enabled on your Windows. you can selectively choose and disable the services, which you are not using. The steps are as follows.

• double-click on the service name to open the Properties window
• select the General tab
• change the Startup type in the dropdown list
• select the Service status to Start or Stop the service

If you find it confusing to choose the services, which you want to disable, I would suggest you to consider disabling following services to make Windows faster.

• Application Management
• Clipbook
• Computer Browser
• Error Reporting Service
• HID Input Service
• Indexing Service
• Net Logon
• NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Network Location Awareness (NLA)
• Network Provisioning Service
• Portable Media Serial Number Service
• QoS RSVP
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Secondary Logon (If you only have one user on your computer)
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service
• Telnet
• Uninterruptable Power Supply
• WebClient
• Windows Time
• WMI Performance Adapter

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

The page file is a tool used by the Windows when you are not having sufficient space in RAM. If you optimize the page file size, then it will help you to increase the speed of Windows. The paging file sometimes is also referred to as swap file. Windows generally sets your initial swap file size at 1.5 times the amount of RAM.This size gets reduced or increased based upon the system requirements automatically.

If you ever get a message from XP saying “out of memory,” it means your swap file is too small, so you should increase it.

How to optimize Paging file to increase Windows speed

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Few simple steps

Right-click My Computer > select Properties.

Click on the Advanced tab.

Click Settings in the Performance section.

Choose the Advanced tab.

Click change in the Virtual memory section

Click Custom

Type the initial size and the maximum size you may wish to have for the page file > Click on Set.

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.

This post is part of the 17 Tips Series on How to Make Windows Run Faster.

Windows users generally use a lot of heavy-weight programs, which are a drain on your PC resources. You will be surprised to know, that there are lot of other light-weight software available on the Internet, which can do most of the task performed by these heavy-weight software. For an average user, these light weight programs are highly beneficial because of two reasons.

• They are open source, so FREE.
• They are light-wight and hence make your Windows run fast.

Here we are giving you a list of 50 light weight open source software, which can easily replace some of the most popular software on your PC. They not only can save you thousands of $$$ but also speed up your Windows to make Windows run faster.

Basics Software

Windows Vista can be replaced by Ubuntu OS
Internet Explorer can be replaced by Firefox

Office Suites

Microsoft Office can be replaced by OpenOffice
Mactopia can be replaced by NeoOffice

Office Tools

MathWorks MATLAB can be replaced by Scilab
Microsoft Access can be replaced by Kexi
Microsoft Word can be replaced by OpenOffice Writer
Microsoft Excel can be replaced by OpenOffice Calc
Microsoft Visio can be replaced by Dia

Productivity Tools

Blackboard can be replaced by Moodle
Box can be replaced by Cabos
Microsoft Project can be replaced by Open Workbench
Mindjet can be replaced by FreeMind

Graphic Programs

Adobe Illustrator can be replaced by Inkscape
Adobe PhotoShop can be replaced by GIMP
Adobe Premiere can be replaced by Avidemux
AutoCAD can be replaced by Archimedes
Microsoft PowerPoint can be replaced by OpenOffice Impress
Microsoft Paint can be replaced by Tux Paint

Web Editors

TruSpace can be replaced by Blender
Adobe GoLive CS2 can be replaced by Mozilla SeaMonkey
Adobe Dreamweaver can be replaced by NVU
Macromedia Flash Professional can be replaced by OpenLaszlo
Microsoft FrontPage can be replaced by Bluefish

Publishing Tools

Windows Notepad can be replaced by ConTEXT
Altova XMLSpy can be replaced by XML Copy Editor
Adobe Acrobat can be replaced by PDFCreator
Adobe Framemaker can be replaced by DocBook
Microsoft Publisher can be replaced by Scribus

Communication Tools

AIM can be replaced by Pidgin
FeedDemon can be replaced by RSS Bandit:
Microsoft MSN Messenger can be replaced by aMSN
Microsoft Outlook can be replaced by Thunderbird
Skype can be replaced by Wengophone

Media

iTunes can be replaced by Songbird
Nero Burning Rom can be replaced by K3b
Quicktime can be replaced by Darwin Streaming Server
TiVo Desktop can be replaced by Galleon.tv:
Windows Media Player can be replaced by Miro

Utilities

CuteFTP can be replaced by Filezilla
iBackup can be replaced by ZManda
Norton Ghost can be replaced by Partition Image
Rational Purify can be replaced by Valgrind
WinZip can be replaced by 7-Zip

Security Tools

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal can be replaced by Winpooch
McAfee VirusScan can be replaced by ClamWin
Norton Personal Firewall can be replaced by WIPFW
Authorize.net can be replaced by OpenSSL

Financial Tools

Microsoft Money (Plus) can be replaced by TurboCash
Quickbooks can be replaced by Compiere

See also the other 16 tips to How to Make Windows Run Faster.