Working with Newer Applications
Product differentiation and the idea that the buyer is getting more for their purchasing dollar drive vendors to constantly add new features to applications. Whenever a feature is active, whether you use it or not, it consumes system resources. In some cases, application features provide an essential service, such as the spelling and grammar checking that most word processors provide in the background. However, some of these features consume so many resources that the application slows to a crawl. The feature might be a good idea, but the cost of running it is too high. Finally, some application features don’t have any useful purpose for a particular user at all. For example, Microsoft Office provides Smart Tags—a useful feature for some office workers, but not necessarily important for the home user.
The problem with all of these new features is that the vendor simply assumes that you want to use them. After all, the vendor has devoted considerable time and resources to create the feature, so someone must need it. An application, such as a word processor, which works fine on your machine today, might not work well tomorrow because of the new features the vendor provides. When you don’t need the feature, then the application is actually creating a dirty environment—one that doesn’t use resources efficiently. Your old hardware would probably work with the new application if you
remove the features you don’t need. In short, applications require installation tuning to ensure they include just the features you need. For additional information on application tuning requirements,
see the “Tuning Your Applications” section of Chapter 1.
Understanding the Need to Archive Old Data
Hard drives are like attics—they both collect a lot of junk that someone thinks they need, but never uses once the item is stored. Some users are worse than others when it comes to storing old data. It’s not very hard to find files on someone’s system that date from several years before. In fact, it’s possible to find files that you can’t open because the user no longer owns the required application. The “Cleaning Your Hard Drive” section of Chapter 1 describes other related hard drive problems. The bottom line is that you can often rid yourself of old files and clear up hard drive space as a result.
Sometimes people need to keep older files. A home user won’t want to get rid of the pictures of mom and dad simply because the files have become old. Imagine the chaos if your doctor or lawyer
purged old files that you really need for medical or legal reasons. Corporations have certain legal requirements for data storage. When a file isn’t in use, but you do need to retain it, then it’s time to
archive the data. Archiving preserves the data, but still moves it out of the way.
Don’t confuse archiving with the backup process described in the “Performing Backups” section of Chapter 8. A backup is a medium-term storage and recovery method for protecting your computing investment—it doesn’t remove data from your system; backups create a copy of that data. An archive, as described in Chapter 5, moves data from your hard drive to a permanent storage media such as a Compact Disk (CD) or Digital Video Disk (DVD). The idea behind an archive is to preserve the data while making your system more efficient.
Taken From : Microsoft Windows XP Power Optimization
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