The Computer Seems Faster Because It's Slower

To make a computer faster, sometimes you need to slow things down. It may seem to you that it takes a long time for your computer to start. My office computer is slow because what I do in the office doesn't require a great deal of speed. Where I notice the problem, though, is at startup time. Because every autostart application tries to start at the same time, they get in each other's way. Step on each other's digital toes. Trip each other up. As a result, I can't do any real work on the computer for about 15 minutes.

Windows starts a lot of services and I start a lot of programs that I need to synchronize a calendar, to grab screen shots, to back up files, to run macros, and to communicate via instant messenger. In all, about 35 applications are all trying to load simultaneously.

Some are more important than others. I need the mouse driver right away, for example. Most of the Windows services need to be running as soon as possible. We want the antivirus application to be fully functional. But some applications aren't as important. If the screen capture program, the macro program, calendar sync, and such don't start for a few minutes, that's OK. But I thought the only way to do that would be to remove these programs from either the StartUp folder or the Run folder in the Registry. Then, of course, I would have to start them by hand.

Enter Startup Delayer.

R2 Studios is an Australian company that creates commercial software and also offers free utilities. Startup Delayer is one of the free programs.

Cliff Crawley of Brisbane started R2 Studios in 2001 and continues to run the business in his "spare time". Startup Delayer is now a version 2.5, but Cliff says that he's working on version 3. The next version "will have 100% support for Windows 7 as well as some new automatic features for launching applications."

Startup Delayer doesn't demand that users pay. It doesn't nag. But if you visit the company's website, you'll have the opportunity to donate.

Click for a larger view.When you load Startup Delayer, it examines your system and identifies the applications that start with Windows. It then presents the list to you and allows you to schedule them so that they start a specific number of seconds, minutes, and hours after Windows starts.

You can also deselect an application so that it won't start at all.

And you can use Startup Delayer to start any application in its list, whether it's been disabled or, during startup, you need it to be running sooner than you thought.

I identified 8 applications that take a long time to start (Digsby, for example) or that I don't need to be active right away (SnagIt). Then I scheduled these applications to start later:

I've left some spaces because I believe that other autostart applications might reasonably be added to the list. For example, I know that I will always start Outlook, Chrome, Firefox, and Secure CRT. It might make sense to add these to the autostart queue.

As a result of this change, I can load Outlook, Chrome, Firefox , and SecureCRT much sooner and start to be productive faster. The other applications load later, more or less in the background. After 20 minutes, everything is running.

Startup Delayer seems to be one of just two applications that continue to be developed. Many of the programs date back to 2005 or 2001, but Crawley also offers Xion, an audio player that I haven't yet tried.

4 CatsBottom Line: Slow startups and speed your computer.

This is one of the most sensible utilities I've ever seen and given its price (free)  I would make sure its on every computer I own. Actually it's not yet on my Windows 7/64-bit machine, but it is on the Windows 7/32 bit system and it works exactly as expected. I believe that it would work properly on the 64-bit operating system, but I know that version 3 will fully support Windows 7, so I'm waiting a bit. The rating is 4 cats instead of 5 only because it's not yet available for Windows 7.
For more information, visit the R2 Studios website.

Free For All

Alt.comp.freeware is a newsgroup that's dedicated to identifying and advancing the best free applications available. Newsgroup? Depending on how long you've known about the Internet, you may know nothing about newsgroups, consider them to be an essential part of your daily life, or think that they're used for nothing but porn and stolen software. In fact, the news protocol (nntp) is the second- or third-oldest protocol on the Internet — behind only e-mail and (maybe) telnet. Those in the know still consider newsgroups to be a valuable resource.

If you don't do newsgroups, there's a website that will take you to many of the gems reported by newsgroup members. It's called PricelessWare. The list reflects categories and programs favored by alt.comp.freeware newsgroup participants. Although it's not a comprehensive list, you'll find many useful recommendations here — in some cases, programs you already know about.

Does Software Want To Be Free?

Maybe. Many classes of applications exist. Some are free. Some are not. Here's a summary from the PricelessWare site, with my additions and clarifications. Note that some types of freeware are to be embraced; some are to be shunned.

The most recent list is the 2009 PricelessWare List, which lists the applications that contributors to alt.comp.freeware voted the most useful programs last year.

In looking through the list, I noticed many applications that I use on a regular basis. 7Zip, for example, CCleaner, GhostScript, HJSplit, IrfanView, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, MozBackup, Open Office, Opera, PuTTY, and Revo Uninstaller, just to name a few.

With the exception of large applications (Open Office, for example), most of the applications are utilities (CCleaner, GhostScript) or single-function applications (IrfanView, PuTTY, or Revo Uninstaller.) It's really worth looking at the list of available applications and asking yourself if one of these free applications might perform a task that you need to have performed.

If you're looking for applications that force you to pay less (or nothing) to use them, a visit to alt.comp.freeware (you'll need a newsreader for this) or PricelessWare would be a good way to spend an afternoon.

In coming weeks, I'll tell you about some of the free programs I use, why I use them, and what I like about them in addition to the price. This week's first segment was about a free application that is a welcome addition to a slow computer.

Intel Pledges to Stop Playing Dirty

Based on what's been said about the company, if Intel's chips were on a par with the company's marketing ethics, we'd still be running 4.77 MHz 8088 processors. Now, although it says it never did any of those things that has landed the company in hot water both in the US and abroad, Intel is promising never to do them again. This week the chip maker reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, but that's not the end of Intel's legal challenges.

In short, Intel accepted all the terms of the settlement, but never admitted that it had actually committed any of these anti-competitive acts.

The agreement with the FTC forces Intel to establish a $10 million fund that will be used to help business customers modify software if Intel misled them. This seems a rather small amount, given the cost of computer programming.

Last year, the European Commission fined Intel nearly one and a half billion dollars for anti-competitive acts and legal actions by some states, Europe, and Asia are still pending.

Intel was clearly afraid of its smaller rival, AMD. For several years starting in 2003, AMD's technology was ahead of Intel's. The charges against Intel suggest that when the company couldn't win on technological grounds, it made restrictive agreements with computer manufacturers.

But of course Intel never did anything wrong, even if it pledged never again to do the things that it denied doing in the first place.

Short Circuits

The Weekly (Weakly) Kindle Report

Last week I said that Amazon had nearly convinced me to buy a Kindle. Before Monday, I had ordered a Kindle and it was scheduled for delivery around the end of August. On Tuesday, I canceled the order. I haven't ordered one of the competing products and won't until I can research them more carefully. That's too bad because I really like the idea of being able to carry several (or several hundred, or several thousand) books with me for reference or to read at lunch or during other non-productive times.

I knew that the Kindle wouldn't load library books that have digital rights management (DRM) enabled, but that applications existed to modify the files so that they would load. The technology doesn't remove the DRM, but just modifies the file so that the Kindle can understand it. If third-party programmers can do this, I have to think that Amazon could figure it out, but has chosen not to.

Instead, Amazon directs users to "over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books". What I found, in the several services I looked at, are sites that are difficult to navigate, few books that I really want to read, and many files that have such serious defects that they are unreadable.

I was able to determine this for myself because Amazon has a free application Kindle for PC that runs on any Windows PC. You can then use it to view any book that you could view on a real Kindle.

Because so many of the e-books are either physically damaged or mentally unchallenging, the ability to borrow e-books from the library is particularly important, but the more I read about the process of modifying library files to work with the Kindle, the less excited I was by the prospect of doing so.

I visited Amazon's website and sent a message to the support staff asking for confirmation that the new version either would or would not work with DRM-protected files from libraries. The response was a page of legalese that purported to explain what DRM is, so clearly the person who received my question hadn't bothered to read and understand it.

In a reply to that message, I explained that I know what DRM is and again asked that Amazon state plainly whether the new version of the reader would work with DRM-protected books. The answer was marginally clearer: "Currently we do not have a program specifically for library lending of e-books," and again the writer pointed me to the page of legalese.

That's too bad because I am truly excited by the thought of being able to carry around dozens of PDF-based reference works, maybe a novel or two, and some non-fiction works. Given BN's somewhat precarious financial position, I'm reluctant to consider the third horse in what is essentially a 2-horse race. And the reviews of Sony's entry haven't inspired me to covet one. Besides, I've had problems with Sony's computing devices in the past.

Although the electronic book may be the book of the future, the future is more distant now than it appeared to be last week.

More Losses for the Incredible Shrinking AOL

America On Line is still in the top 10 when it comes to Web traffic, but you'd never know it from the way the company is perceived. News that AOL has just reported a second-quarter loss of $1 billion isn't going to help with that image, either. The company's base of dial-up users continues to shrink as people move to higher-speed options.

Dial-up subscriptions dropped nearly 30% in the quarter, but much of this year's second-quarter loss came from write-downs as AOL reduced the book value of Bebo. That's a social-networking site you've probably never heard of.

Advertising revenue, down in the first quarter, was down more than 25% in the second quarter. Instead of a $1 billion dollar loss, a year ago AOL reported a net income of $91 million.

AOL says the write-down shows that the company is now getting stronger and will do more than just survive. The word used, actually, was "thrive".