Once again its time for me to get up on my soapbox and create a page purely for self gratification. Possibly a few of you will take heed to some of my thoughts and recommendations. Those of you who frequent this site and those who know me, are aware of the fact that I regularly send out links and emails concerning new software that I have found to be useful or beneficial to you or to keep your system running at peak performance along with news of technical improvements to programs and the windows operating system.

This page will be a slight departure for that venue and center more on programs that, in my opinion, should be avoided. Time and time again people come to me with computers that they complain are sluggish and not as fast as they once were. Upon booting the machines, almost without fail, I can look at the tasktray (that area down there next to your clock) and see all kinds of things open in the tray. WELL, GUESS WHAT PEOPLE?? Every one of those little icons down there is a running application robbing you of speed and resources!!

Then the first words out of the owners mouth is :"I didn't put them there, they just appeared suddenly by some strange twist of puters." OK, so you didn't put them there. Eliminating devine intervention, I think a supreme being has better things to do than add things to your computer, that leaves gremlins, aliens from zarcon, Jimmy Hoffa, the tooth fairy, and you. Which one do you think is going to hold up in court? Certainly you put them there! Most times it is unknown to you that you did, but, you installed some program and by some strange reason it suddenly started appearing down there every time you start up your system. Did the thought ever cross your mind to see if you can get rid of some of them or did you think when they ran all the way across the taskbar that you would simple buy a new computer so you could have room to install a few more?

Let me pause here and explain a little bit to you about your system and why I am ranting about having so many things running down there. Most of you are running computers with a bare minimum of resources to begin with. So, when you add all those un-needed applications to the mix it simple slows down your system further but putting a larger load on the whole system. The three things that are used most while you use your computer are ram, virtual memory, and the processor. Lets look at your system like an automobile. Take any vehicle, load it full of people, load the trunk with firewood, attach a trailer and load it with rocks. Start it up and try to climb a mountain. Think its going to strain the engine just a bit to get up the hill? Thats what you are doing to your computer. Drop the trailer and unload the trunk and you zoom right along. Drop off a few people and you move along even better. Now, I ask you, do you want a Porsche or a Yugo?

There are several ways to remove those pesky programs from the task tray. The first is simply to open the program and look in the preferences or options for anything that says start with windows or "always run at startup" and disable them. Assuming you don't find anything in preferences, try right-clicking (clicking on the icon with the right mouse button" and looking for a disable or settings etc. in the pop up menu. When you have tried both of these you can also try one more thing if you still haven't found a way to shut them down permanently. Click on the start button and go to run. In the run window type in "msconfig" and hit enter. In most versions of windows a box will appear with several tabs at the top. Go to the tab that says "startup". Leave the rest alone unless you are absolutly sure what you are doing. Look down the list and remove the check marks from anything you do not absolutly need when windows boots . Now, don't give me that hooey, you can open that when you need it. This should do it but go to my tweaks page if you still have things there and see how to remove programs from the start menu.

Here is a partial list of programs which are a total waste of resources and most are "spyware". SPYWARE PROGRAMS ARE THOSE WHICH WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE, REPORT EVERYTHING YOU DO BACK TO ITS CREATOR SO THAT THEY CAN SELL THE INFORMATION TO ADVERTISERS AND MARKETERS.! I recommend you get AdAware from my "system Essentials" page.

My Avoid List

Weatherbug...what, you cant bookmark a weather page?

Gator...This ones sneaky and a real pain to get rid of.

CD Software..Many cd burning programs run all the time waiting for you to burn. Can't you just open it when you need it?

News Tickers...Hey, go to MSNBC, Google News, or any other good news source and leave the resources for what you're doing.

Real Player...disable the start center. The thing will start just fine when you need it.

Office Toolbar..This usually doesn't show up in the tray but at the top or side of your screen. A HUGE resource hog and has been known to cause you to lock-up...disable it.

Messengers...ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Paltalk, Etc....start them when you need them and not when you boot up. Pick one, you can't run them all and not slow your system down. I run trillian which allows you to talk to all the major messengers and IRC.

Well, it's 2 am and my mind is mush but I will be adding more programs to the list as I think of them. Do yourself a favor, clean your startup and rid your machine of spyware with AdAware and you will have a much more enjoyable experience.

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