Why you Should Wait Till 2007 to Buy a PC

1. Quad-Core Chips
2. NAND HDD
3. DDR-4 Graphic Cards
4. DDR-3 RAM
5. DirectX 10
6. Windows Vista

Quad-Core Chips
Intel has announced recently that they will push for the release of their Quad-Core chips by the end of 2006 instead of the second quarter of 2007. This would mean that, all technology prior to multi-core will be kinda obsolete. With the release of Vista which is scheduled to be out around early 2007, it will be significantly heavy on those single-core processors. With Quad-Core or more, different tasks can be run simultaneously without slowing down the system compare to running multiple tasks on a single core processor.

NAND HDD
Samsung has recently released that they have successfully developped a SSD (Solid State Disk) Hard Disk with capacities up to 32GB. They plan to replace their laptop hard disk with this so called NAND Hard Disk. With this technology, being developped, it is possible for them to fit more of those NAND Flash Memory onto a 3.25" than a 2.5" laptop HDD size. Having no moving parts in this HDD, it will significantly reduce the heat generated and also prolong the lifespan of the HDD

DDR-4 Graphic Card RAMs
Since, DDR-3 on graphic cards have sort of reached its limit, its time to move on to DDR-4 which offers a higher memory clock speed of at least 1500MHz and above. With the release of newer cards which support DirectX 10 or the new PhysX Engine, having a higher memory clock speed would speed up the transfer rate of the graphics to the frame buffer.

DDR-3 RAM for Motherboards
There will soon be DDR-3 type RAMs available for motherboard soon as DDR-2 is beginning to fade out with its limit of up to 1000Mhz memory clock speed on the high performance type RAM. Normal DDR-2 RAMs are around 400, 533MHz. With DDR-3, it is possible to crank the memory clock speed even higher.

DirectX 10
Windows Vista promises the release of the highly anticipated DirectX 10 technology where newer games can take account the calculation of high-end physics and superior graphics. Graphic cards which supports this new DirectX 10, will be able to play and enjoy all the new things DirectX 10 will offer. However, if your card is manufactured to support DirectX 9, you will not be able to experience the new technology and graphics system provided by DirectX 10.

Windows Vista
This will be one of the most highly power consumption operating system ever developped. Original Specs recommended by Microsoft when it first started building Vista was a PC with 4.0GHz with 4GB RAM and 1GB Video Card RAM. Transparency effects and some other cutting-edge technologies will be inserted into Vista. Security will be their main concern as they move to try to minimise the security loopholes which many hackers try to exploit. Therefore having a what I call "kickass" PC is important when this OS comes out.

Therefore, it is best to wait for these technologies to arrive onto the market, let it stabilise and then purchase them. Purchasing a PC now may not acutally fully support windows Vista thus not enjoying the full Vista Experience. If you can hold on to your 1.x-2.x Ghz Computers, please do.

Tinkering with Registry to Control your Startup Apps

1 of the reasons why a PC startup is slow is because of the many unwanted/unused applications which are scheduled to load upon windows startup. Applications like MSN messenger, Winzip, Winamp agent, AcroTray, Power DVD Remote Control Application, and some others.

However, if you do not have an antivirus or antispyware applications, there may be some other background running programs which may be scheduled to load upon windows loadup thus causing the system to slow down or a virus to start infecting files.

To find out what programs/applications are scheduled to start up with windows, simply go Start > Run and type "msconfig".
Click the Startup tab and you'll be presented with all the executables (EXE) of the program being loaded at startup.

Before thinking that each of them is a virus/spyware/worm, simply goto Yahoo or Google and search for that EXE file for information. Use several sources before believing it. Some sites may say that the file is a virus and some may say its a harmless file.

So now the question is, how do we remove those applications from being started up with windows? And if I turn it off, will that program still work?

I'll answer the second one first, if the Executable file is either some Antivirus or Antispyware application, then it is best not to turn it off, If its some unknown file, identify it with google/yahoo and then decide if you want to have it loadup with windows.

As for removing those files, for applications which has a taskbar icon, most of it can be disabled by opening the program related and turn off, startup with windows in one of the options/preference page

For other applications which runs in the background and you think could be slowing the system down, goto Start > Run and type "regedit".

The location of those startup files will be
HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run (Most startup files will be here)
HKU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run

Find the appropriate executable which you do not want and simply delete the registry entry. For safety measures, always backup the keys you're about to delete by selecting the ones you want to delete and click File > Export

Save the registry file somewhere and then proceed with the deletion of those entries.

You can open Msconfig again and under Startup, those executables will not be there anymore. Restart the computer and you'll notice that those programs will not load anymore.

If there are problems with the windows startup after this registry tinkering, head to Safe Mode and reload the registry entries back and restart the computer.

If your computer is affected by viruses, the virus will msot probably plant an entry in the registry to loadup with windows on the next restart. Therefore, you could actually goto the registry, delete those entries, delete the EXE files from the location listed on the registry editor. By doing this, sometimes all you need is to access windows and to backup the files you need before formatting or do some important assignment but is blocked out by viruses/spywares. This method will most of the time solve it temporarily till you locate the virus/spyware with the appropriate program and erase it permanently.