I hope you find these tips interesting and useful! I would appreciate any feedback you may have.

1. Voice recognition 

   Voice recognition used to be a separate program that costs £30 (60$) upwards as they are rather complex pieces of programming. Voice recognition can shave hours off work or be used for a little fun. Find it under ease of access on the start menu and start talking to your computer!
   

2. Disable automatic startup programs 

   This is the first thing I do whenever I get a new computer. It can save so much time when starting up your computer by closing a few unnecessary programs. Just go into the start menu and type in "msconfig" this will bring up a box. Click the "startup" tab and deselect any undesirable programs. The more you remove the faster your PC gets! (this isn't just a vista tip, it works on all windows operating systems)
   

3. Windows sidebar 

   How many of you have had that sidebar sat at the side of the screen without adding anything new to it? Here are some really good widgets that I recommend.
   

4. Save battery 

   If you're a laptop user like myself then you'll know how frustrating it is to run out of battery in the middle of something important. This little gadget will help you save those precious minutes of battery by turning off aero whenever your system is low on battery.
   

5. Have a cleanup 

   Vista is packed full of maintenance software such as disk defraggers, virus scanners and firewalls. The majority of the can be found on the start menu > accessories > system tools

1. Get an Antivirus Program

   This is a very important step to take. Viruses such as Trojans and worms can not only slow your computer to a crawl, they can do serious damage to files and even steal information from your computer. Antivirus programs don't have to be expensive, either. As the title of this article indicates, many free programs are available. Download.com has an extensive collection of virus scanners, most of which are free. Downloading one of these programs can keep your computer protected and running faster for quite some time.

2. Get a Spyware Dectector

   Spyware and addware can be loaded onto your computer from almost any web site on the Internet. What's more, more often than not you won't even know it's been installed. Like a virus, these programs can wreak havoc with your computer and even steal information, so getting one of these programs is essential to having a healthy computer. Again, free software is readily available on the Internet.

3. Defrag Your Hard Drive

   Ever once in a while, defragmenting your hard drive can really help speed up your computer. Defragging is a simple process that involves your computer moving files around to allow itself to run faster. The program is a part of Windows and can be found under the AccessoriesSystem Tools menu. Defragging once every month or so can increase your computer's speed by a large amount.

4. Keep Tabs on Your Hard Drive Space

   Hard drive space can disappear very quickly. As it does, your computer will run slower. This problem is easy to avoid; simply check to see how much space you have left on occasion. To monitor your drives more in-depth, a program such as FileAnt can give you a complete breakdown of where your hard drive space is going and can help you identify things tat can be removed to save space.

5. Clean Up Your Hard Drive

   Also a Windows program, the Clean Up feature checks your hard drive and finds information that is not necessary to keep, such as temporary internet files, deleted items in the Recycle Bin, and so forth. Usually the space saved here is minimal, but even small amounts can help speed your computer back up.

6. Avoid Double Saving

   Double saving is rarely intentional, but sometimes duplicates of files end up in places you wouldn't think to look for them. Unless you wanted to create a backup of a file, these files take up space and slow down your computer. Using the Search feature can help you find places where Windows creates a backup that isn't needed.

7. Get a Popup Blocker

   Popups on the Internet are usually harmless but they take time and memory to load. They are annoying, they slow down your computer, and they can be avoided. Free programs are available to block popups, and some Internet browsers such as Firefox have built-in popup blockers and add blockers for a faster, more enjoyable Internet experience.

These are just a few tips, but following them will keep your computer running faster and more effectively for as long as you follow them.

Need for speed and storage

My computer is four years old and running a bit slow. I hadn't realized how slow until a member of the family showed me their new laptop and the speed that they could do things. And so I realized that something needed to be done.

There were two problems. I have a huge collection of photos and they are clogging up my hard drive. So I needed a way of storing them off the hard drive. Secondly the programs wee taking along time to run and load - this is a sign that the computer is lacking RAM. RAM (random access memory) is the size of brain power that the computer can call on at any one time to perform what you want it to do. My first computer had a minuscule RAM and my present one has 256MB but today that is small. I run Windows XP but to run Vista in its most basic version they recommend a minimum of 1 GB RAM.

Easy to fix

Both these problems are easy to fix. Lets deal with the storage first. My computer has a fast 54x CD player in it. This is great for loading programs and was state of the art when I bought the system but it is now out of date. DVDs have mostly replaced CDs for computer storage. They can hold much larger amount of information and also can be used for multi media such as storing video clips. I was attracted by the idea of saving my entire collection of several thousand photos onto one DVD.

Unplug the old and plug in the new

What makes it easy to take out the old CD drive and put in a new DVD writer drive is that there is an industry standard. To put it very simply they all have the same plugs in the back and are all the same size and so you should be able to take the back off, take one drive out, put the other one in , put the plugs into the same sockets in the back and then start it up and off it goes. Windows XP on my machine recognized the new hardware and the disk supplied with it made it simple to install. So there it is.

Undo the screws, take out the three lugs ( one for the power, one for the sound and one wide ribbon with loads of pins that connects the drive to the main board on the computer and plug them carefully back into the same holes in the new one. I am not a techie person but I did this first time and it worked. Be careful - there is a little plug on the back of most drives which you have to set to either master or slave. If you are replacing an existing drive just make sure that it is the same setting as the one that you are taking out.

Problem

The only problem I had was that the floppy disk drive didn't work after I put the side back on. This caused a hic up in the boot program - this means it didn't start properly. I took the side off and found that I had accidentally knocked the power plug out of the back of the floppy disk drive when I put the new DVD drive in. A simple but silly mistake so be careful not to pull any plugs out accidentally.

Its all modules

You can see from this a computer is all made up of modules. They are all attached to the motherboard where the main processing chip is located. This can be seen as it will have a big fan on top of it as there processors can get very hot. The RAM memory is plugged directly into the motherboard.

Adding RAM

With my computer I had a motherboard handbook. This have details of the number of slots available to add extra RAM. The specification told me I had 2 DDM slots and only one of them was used and had a 256MB ram card plugged into it. I took the side off the computer and located the empty slot. I looked at the spec on the existing ram and the max possible in the handbook. I looked online at my favorite computer components supplier and found a special deal on exactly the same Kingston 256DDM ram so I bought another one the same.

In older computers you used to have to have pairs of matching RAM cards but with DDM you can put in any combination. So for under £10 ($20US) I doubled my RAM to 512MB. (the handbook said the motherboard could accept a maximum of 2GB RAM but these are much more expensive and I didn't have that amount of money to spend on an upgrade at this time. When adding RAM into an empty slot there should be nothing else to do as the computer will recognize the RAM instantly and start working faster immediately.

I surprised myself

So with little technical knowledge and for very little money I have transformed my four year old desktop computer. And the most amazing thing is that for a non technical person like myself it was relatively easy and worked first time.