Alan Kleymeyer

The best and most reliable way to speed up your computer is to reinstall the operating system.  Yes, I know it is a hassle and an extreme option but it’s the best option.  You can try to manually cleanup your computer and you can make improvements but this is time consuming and no gaurantee you will fix the biggest problems.  Reinstalling the OS requires that you back everything up which is a good thing to get in the habit of.  Your computer could crash one day and you should be prepared for this anyway.

Reinstalling the OS takes a few hours but it runs pretty much unattended.  The most work will be preparing for the reinstallation.

But if reinstalling the OS  isn’t an option, here are the things you can do to improve performance:

1. Remove spyware using Windows Defender or AdAware
2. Remove viruses using Microsoft’s free scanning service or installing Microsoft’s free Security essentials  software.
3. If you are low on disk space, free up disk space using Disk Cleanup or WinDirStat
4. Defrag your disk
5. Detect and repair disk errors
6. Make sure you have enough RAM
7. Uninstall unused program
8. Remove unneeded services
9. Remove programs that auto-start
10. If your browser is causing problems use a different one.  You may inadvertently have installed many plugins for Internet Explorer which is slowing it down or causing problems.  Firefox and Google Chrome are excellent alternatives.

For more ideas checkout this articles.

I had my first bad  experience with Google software which has been remedied but it was enough for me to  reevaluate my level of commitment using their websites and software.  Everyone knows it’s not good to rely on just one company for ANYTHING.  Over time I have become  more reliant on Google for  mail and  documents.  I use their Calendering and Picassa/Web Albums, Blogger, and Google Voice service.  I also use GMAIL  for my company’s tech support and we share documents at work.

This week when I attempted to create a new document, I got a message that I may be in violation of their terms of service. I was  locked  out from ALL  accounts which was tied to my Google  GMAIL account.  I couldn’t check GMAIL or use Google Docs. Soon after that, I received a message that a blog I had setup (http://pcbestpractices.blogspot.com) had been flagged as a possible SPAM site.  Ironically, that blog I started which has 2 lengthy posts attempting to inform about the proper use of BCC,  and how to manage photos is probably the two most USEFUL posts I’ve ever created!  Here is the text of the email  I received:

Hello,

Your blog at: http://pcbestpractices.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog.  To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at [linked removed]

Your blog will be deleted in 20 days if it isn’t reviewed, and your readers will see a warning page during this time. After we receive your request, we’ll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. Once we have reviewed and determined your blog is not spam, the blog will be unlocked and the message in your Blogger dashboard will no longer be displayed. If this blog doesn’t belong to you, you don’t have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won’t be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

P.S. Just one more reminder: Unless you request a review, your blog will be deleted in 20 days. Click this link to request the review: [link removed]

The only thing I can think of is that the fact my blog was flagged as a potential spam site, triggered the lockout of all my other google accounts.

It’s one thing to suspect wrong doing and I accept that there are false positives, but to turn off EVERYTHING associated with an account until  it is proven an error doesn’t strike me as not Doing Evil.  It’s like the policy of shooting first and asking questions later.

I’m not  going to stop using Google properties, but I’ve got my foot on the brake and I will no longer recommend them as enthusastically, or without warnings.  I will post a Google Best Practices ;-) at a later time.

Here are a few other stories related to being “Google Owned”

When Google Owns You

A Google Horror Story

The blogging experience has two parts. The first part is creating and maintaining a weblog. The second part is reading and keeping track of multiple weblogs using a dedicated program that works similar to a mail program.  Often referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, news readers, or search aggregators,  these programs allows you to “subscribe” to various weblogs and not have to worry about what new information has been posted to each blog. The information will be pulled down and ready to read in the Newsreader at regular intervals, just like a mail program.  A special program is not required to read a weblog.  A weblog is always available through a browser.  But a specialized program is highly recommended.

I  recommend:

FeedDemon for Windows
NetNewsWire for Mac
GoogleReader for a  web-based reader.

The latest versions of mail clients like Outlook or Mac Mail have built in support for RSS as do many browsers.    There are also RSS  readers for tablets and smartphones.

(Updated Aug 10, 2011)

I have a Gmail account that I use to login to Google properties such as Google Docs.  Gmail  is not  my primary email  account.  I’ve started using it more;  for LBJ class reunion stuff for example.   I’ve used it quite a bit as a “throwaway” email when sites ask for an email address but I don’t want to give them my personal email.  I highly recommend it to anyone as either a primary or secondary address.  There are  two main things I like about  Gmail that I think everyone should take advantage of.

1.  Have Google forward all mail to your primary address.  That way you don’t ever have to login to Gmail and for all  practical purposes, you can use your primary mail to receive and reply to people using your Gmail account.  Of course if you  don’t want people knowing your primary account, they you would login to Gmail  and respond from there.  Setup forwarding by clicking Settings in the upper right corner…select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP  tab…Select forward a copy of incoming mail  to…enter your primary email address…choose what to do with the mail that arrives in your Gmail  account.

2. Take advantage of a little known feature that allows you to create NEW email addresses on the fly!  My email address is alankley@gmail.com.  I can give out alankley+facebook@gmail.com, alankley+anything@gmail.com and those email addresses will be delivered to my Gmail mailbox.  I’ve created quite a few like that when I’m asked for an email address. That way I can turn them off if I start receiving spam or I can setup filters to file them away or forward them.  Not all websites accept an email  with a ‘+’ in it but many do.  Here is the Google Help page on the subject:  Using an Address Alias

If you are concerned about the safety of your information using Google Gmail and Docs, I wrote this post on what I think of that.

Update: 10/11/2019

To help cleanup your GMail account here are some search options you can use to list older emails you can delete, or locate emails with attachments:

before: 2019/01/01
larger: 1m
has:attachment larger:5MB

Find the full list here.

Locate unread emails from primary inbox: “category:primary is:unread”

I’ve been using Google  Docs for sometime now.  Both at work and at home. Google didn’t initially make it easy to download or backup your docs but now they have.  Here’s what you do:

From the main screen,  select all…More Actions…Export.   See some screenshots here.