Improve Speed Of Computer With These Long Term Strategies

If you have a day or 2, I highly recommend you to apply these strategies. Unlike other techniques, it might take 1 or 2 days to improve speed of computer. However, these strategies work better than shortcuts that work temporarily.

Step 1: Remove unused programs and files

A computer is like a library. The more books you have in a library, the harder it is to find the book that you want. When you have lots of files and programs installed in your PC, it will take time to find and load as well. By removing programs and files that you don’t use, your computer will run much faster.

To remove programs, you can use the following steps:

Click on “Start” menu
Choose “Settings”
Choose “Control Panel”
Choose “Add or Remove Programs”
Select Programs that you are not using anymore and uninstall or remove it.

To remove the files, just right click the file and delete. After deleting those files, make sure you empty your recycle bin by right clicking on “Recycle Bin” and choose “Empty Recycle Bin”.



Step 2: Move files to external drives

Move seldom or common used files to External Hard Disk or USB Flash Drives. This is also another step to reduce the “books” in your “library”. These tools are getting cheaper nowadays and very affordable. I highly recommend external hard disk because it has more space and not easy to lose it (people around the world are losing more than 1 million of USB flash drives almost every year).

Moving them is quite simple. Just select, cut and paste it on your external hard disk.

Step 3: Cleaning up your desktop

If you are just like me, you probably have tons of files, program shortcuts and folders on your desktop. It is very convenient and I totally understand it. But having lots of stuffs on your desktop will slow down your computer’s performance.

Cleaning up your desktop make require some planning. Create a folder on your desktop and name it as “Work” or “Studies”. You can create 2 or 3 more folders. Next, create more folders in those folders to organize all your files and programs. Keep a habit to organize your files into these folders.

Step 4: Detect errors and repair

If you have been using your computer for months, your hard drive might start to develop errors and bad sectors. These errors will slow down your computer. Fix this errors once a week by following these steps:

Click on “My Computer”
Right click the drive you use (normally Drive C)
Click on “Properties”
Click on the “Tools” tab
Click “Check Now” button
Check the box that says “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
Fix if bad sectors are discovered.

Step 5: Defragment

This is a popular way to improve speed of computer. The steps to defragment are quite simple. Start with clicking on the “Start” menu, choose “All programs”, “Accessories”, “System Tools” and “Disk Defragment”. Click on “Analyze”. Once your computer finish analyzing, click on “Defragment”.

Step 6: Clear hidden Windows errors 

About 90% of SLOW computers are cause by hidden Windows error. Cleaning these errors would be hard if done manually. Fortunately, There’re programs such as PC Speed Doctor to do it for you automatically.

Step 7: Overclocking

Overclocking is a way to hack your own hardware and increase their speed. Overclocking is quite technical too. If you are interested in this step, I highly recommend you to learn from Overclock Your CPU. The author teaches how you can increase processors from 1.9GHz to 3.5Ghz.

Other websites:

• Computer Fundamentals
• web design toronto
• Motorola Surfboard
• nikon digital cameras

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Vocab quiz 3 Caps Lock key Question Mark key and Tab key

Today we will review at the beginning of the hour for vocab quiz #3.

After the quiz, if you did not finish yesterdays assignment you need to complete it and send it to me.

If you are done with both please open Microsoft Word and turn to page 17.  Youll need to type lines 1-3 on 8B using the Caps Lock key (L4) once; after you complete those lines you need to complete lines 4-6 once on 8B - here you will learn the question mark key (Left Shift + R4).

Once you have completed the above lines go to 8C and complete each of those lines once.  In this section you will learn to use the TAB key (L4) - a TAB allows you to move your cursor to a preset position on the line of writing.  For you, as you will see when you type these lines, the preset position is 1/2" from the left margin.

After completing all of these lines raise your hand and I will come and check your work.  Then you may go to any of the practice sites listed on the Website Resources page of the blog.  Make sure to work with your speed skin on your keyboard for the entire hour!

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Posters for Computer Science Careers that use Computer Science

These posters are from the Otronicon Science Center in Orlando, FL. Forget Harry Potter World, we are definitely putting that on the list for our next Florida trip. I am sure this kids wont mind.

Anyhoo, I am fascinated that a science museum has done such a thorough job of including computational thinking and computer science topics in their materials.

Anyway, the posters are free to print and use. They include writing, architecture, linguistics - some fields we dont traditionally associate with computer science.

Some of the other pages have some good resources too. The Medical Sim City page (tagged: See how simulation technology is being used to create better doctors, nurses and other medical professionals) looks like it has some interesting things to help cover the modeling and simulation info in the APCS Principles course, for example.

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Crossword puzzle 1 4 FA3

I will be handing out a crossword puzzle today that will be a review of vocab lists 1-4 - this will be due on Friday.

Today we are going to work on FA3.  I have a few things to go over first before you will be able to start on FA3 - do not start working on this while I am explaining what you need to do.


  Activity 3.pdf

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Computer Science News Roundup May 30 2012

Each week my computer science students do discussion board posts that respond to current events. Here are some stories that caught my eye this week.

Computer Science related news this weeks theme is the future of technology:

• The Spaceship Has Landed - the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has docked at the international space station. How does this change space travel? What are the chances you could ever go to space? would you want to? Do you think this will impact any other areas where research and development happen?
• Optimism - This article talks about the reasons to be optimistic about our future. The author lists several reasons to be optimistic. How does technology play a role? How does the constant stream of information that is created by technology contribute to pessimism? Do you agree with the author? Are you optimistic about your future? Why?
• What do you expect? - Shelly Turkles book is called "Alone together: Why We Expect More From Technology And Less From Each Other". In this article she summarizes some of her ideas. Her Ted Talk on the topic can be found here. What role does technology play in how you communicate? How has computer science impacted how you communicate? How could computer science be used to fix some of the problems the author write about?
• Internet Defense League - This group wants to "defend the Internet from bad laws and monopolies". Do you think there is a need for this? What harm could come from groups like this? Benefits? Should there be a concern about vigilantes on the Internet? And finally - do you agree that the cat is the symbol of the Internet?

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How To Increase Speed Of PC In 5 Minutes

If you want your PC to work faster right now, here’re 5 simple steps you can do to increase the performance of your PC. By applying these steps, your computer can start running faster right now:

Step 1: Remove visual effects

This is a step where you could remove all the fancy effects that make your windows look nice. These effects include fading, shadows and other animations. This step is similar to Windows XP, Vista and 7. The steps are:

Go to your Desktop
Right click "My Computer"
Left click "Properties"
Click on the "Advanced" tab
Under "Performance", click on "Settings"
Under the "Visual Effects" tab, click on "Adjust for best performance"
Click "Apply" and you’re done.


Now, you lose the fancy visual effects but your computer is able to run much faster. By removing all these effects, you will see a significant increase in speed.

Step 2: Use disk cleaner

Disk Cleaner is a free tool provided with Microsoft Windows. It is able to help you clear up to 2GB to 3 GB on your hard disk and speed it up.

"What does deleting temporary files have to do with speed up your computer?" you may ask.

Imagine you have a very messy room full of stuffs, do you think finding something that you want takes time. That is the same to every computer as well. When your computer helps you to store temporary files, they are basically stored in an unorganized way and mixed with important stuffs.

By throwing 10% of the garbage in your messy room, you can find the things you want much faster. That is the same for your computer as well. These are the steps to clean up your PC:

Click on the "Start Menu"
Select "All Programs"
Select "Accessories"
Select "System Tools"
Click on "Disk Cleanup"
Choose your drive that you want to clean (Hard Disk, normally C Drive)

Once you click on "Disk cleanup", the program will start calculating how much space you could free from cleaning some old stuffs. After few minutes of calculating, you will be able to see a list of stuffs you can delete. Check those that are unimportant and delete.

Step 3: Change display settings 

This is very similar to visual effects. Instead of using fancy and colorful backgrounds that waste lots of time and PC power to load, remove them to the basic will speed up your computer. The steps are:

Right click your "Desktop"
Left click "Properties"
Under "Themes" tab, click on the drop down menu and choose "Windows Classic"
Under "Desktop" tab, choose "None" for background.
Under "Appearance" tab, click on the drop down menu below "Windows and buttons".  Choose Windows Classic Style.
Under "Appearance" tab again, click on "Effects…" button, try to uncheck all of them and click "Ok".
Under "Settings" tab, click on the drop down menu below "Color Quality" and choose "16 Bit".
Finally, click on "Apply" and you’re done.

Step 4: Clear hidden Windows errors 

Around 90% of SLOW computers are cause by hidden Windows error. That’s one of the main reasons why your computer starts to slow down after using it for months. Unfortunately, cleaning this error manually is simply too technical. To clean these errors effectively, you can use the help with a program automatically called PC Speed Doctor.

Step 5: Overclocking

Overclocking is a nasty way of improving the performance of your hardware. I don’t recommend you this step if you are using a new PC. This technique is able to boost the performance of your processor and force your computer to run faster. On the other hand, it will generate more heat. Overclocking is quite technical as well. I highly recommend you to learn from an ebook called Overclock Your CPU. The author is able to increase the performance of a processor from 1.9GHz to 3.5Ghz and has helped many people to do so.

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AP Computer Science Report Virginia is for some Coders

The AP data is out for 2013. Some great increased nationwide. AP Computer Science went from 26,103 to 31,117 total exams given, a 19% increase. This was the highest increase out of all of the subject areas. But keep in mind AP Calculus had 282,814 exams last year, so we have a ways to go.

Virginia had 1655 AP Computer Science  exams with a mean score of 3.12. Last year we had 1430 tests with an average of 2.98. Over the past 5 years there has been an 81% increase in the number of APCS exams given. This year was also the highest mean score for the past five years, so some great progress has been made.

According to the state report card 67,805 students took AP exams in 2013 (data here). So teh APCS exam accounted for about 2.5% of the overall number of AP exams given.

Which all sounds great, until you start to look a little deeper.

When you look, in 2013 the number of black students taking the exam was 3. Our max in the past 5 years was 6. Six. That year my personal AP class was 1/3 of those African American students.

Demographically Virginia is about 20% black. With roughly 375,502 students enrolled in Virginia public high schools last year (2013 enrollment data) that means we have roughly 75,000 African American students at the high school level, and 3 took the AP Computer Science exam.

If we randomly assigned students electives we would have fared better.

And you can look at any of the subgroups and see the same trend. For instance for the 2013 exam 25% of the 8 Hispanic students to take the exam sat in my classroom.

Now Im a big believer at starting with data and getting to the stories underneath. The bottom line in Virginia is access.

For instance, Richmond city schools, a predominantly African American school district has no computer science classes. None, zippo, zilch.

This is not about diversity for diversitys sake. This means these kids do not have access to jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Virginia is 4th in the nation for jobs in this area, but 12th population wise. This means we have the highest concentration of jobs nationwide in computer science. Washington DC and Virginia rank #1 and 2 for salary nationwide - so these great jobs cannot be filled by huge numbers of our children. A child sitting in Kindergarten in Richmond City Schools today may never even know this field exists, literally blocks from the front door of their school

And at a deeper level, computer science is the tool we use to solve human problems. Being the person holding the tool means you get to decide what is a problem and what gets a solution. These numbers mean these communities do not get to participate.

So to change the data, we have to change the stories. Every high school in the state needs computer science classes that are rigorous and relevant for its students. That means trained teachers and a working curriculum. Kids and parents need to know that this is an option for them, that they can create using this tool. They need to be able to tell their stories as we build the future.

A few things to put Virginia in Context:

• Virginia has not adopted common core
• Our K-12 end of course tests are called the SOLs (Standards of Learning). Yes, really
• AP Computer Science counts as a 4th math credit here, but only if you are going for an advanced diploma, and you have passed Alg II. were working on it
• We are a Commonwealth, which means our school systems are driven at the local level, not by top down policy and curriculum from the state.
• Out legislature meets either 4 or 6 weeks a year, thats it. 

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