Tag: Performance
With Firefox 3.1 evolved into Firefox 3.5 in the move from Beta 3 to Beta 4, Mozilla is also looking ahead beyond Shiretoko, to the next iteration of its open-source browser. Firefox Next will be codenamed Namoroka and the version number for the project will be 3.6, although this will only be valid for the initial stages. Mozilla in fact refers to what will be the successor of Firefox 3.5 as Firefox.next. Namoroka will be based on the Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine, and is currently planned for availability in the first half of 2010.
“In contrast to previous product planning exercises, which were declarative and relatively inflexible, we hope to develop this project in a highly iterative manner by which we initially declare project goals and prioritized areas of interest for investigation, and then spend time determining the exact shape and scope of feature development tasks. The outcome of these investigations will be a set of feature design documents (using a common template) which will be prioritized and constitute the final product development plan,” revealed Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox at Mozilla Corporation. Read More»
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Microsoft has refreshed its lineup of DirectX offerings at the start of this week, and the company is by no means shy of focusing the spotlight on the evolution of the graphics technology as Windows 7 is contouring. The software giant is offering fresh Technical Previews of Direct2D, DirectWrite, and DXGI 1.1, but also a new TP release of Windows 7/Direct3D 11. The components are available for download as an integral part of the March 2009 iteration of the DirectX Software Development Kit, which is accompanied by the DirectX End-User Runtimes (March 2009) and the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer. Microsoft delivered the first taste of Windows 7 DirectX 11 through the SDK back in November 2008.
Obviously the releases are aimed at a professional audience. Developers will be able to leverage the latest release of the SDK, combining the DirectX Runtime and additional software designed to permit the building of DirectX compliant solutions. With the March 2009 DirectX update, Microsoft has refreshed the tools and utilities included with the software development kit, but also the code samples, documentation, and the 32-bit and 64-bit runtime debug files. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows 7 | 2 Comments »
At the end of the past week, Microsoft made available to the public the results of a “browser measuring contest” involving Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.05 and Google Chrome 1.0. What the Redmond company did was to measure the browser load times for the top 25 websites worldwide. In the software company’s own comparison, IE8 managed to come out on top of its rivals, besting the open source Firefox and Chrome which were released in 2008, and not the current 3.1/3.5 version of Firefox or the 2.0 flavor of Chrome. But the real question is does it matter?
Obviously, Microsoft is rather a new comer to the browser measuring game. Simply because Internet Explorer, while considered by rival browser makers a reference point, never actually needed to compare itself to competitive products, especially from the perspective of the dominant browser on the market. IE continues to account for the lion’s share when it comes down to browser usage share worldwide, but Firefox has made a dent in its dominance that is harder and harder to ignore. And fact is that for the first time in the long life of Internet Explorer, Microsoft has a release that it’s worth comparing, as it is bound to score at least on par with rivals, if not even best them in certain scenarios. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 3 Comments »
If you long for the good old days of XP and still have your install CD, this step-by-step guide will help you revert to Vista’s predecessor.
These days, you have to work to find a new computer that comes with XP installed. Many PC users who upgraded their XP systems to Vista are disappointed with the newer OS’s performance and other problems. In either case, as long as you have an XP installation CD, you can kiss Vista good-bye.
“Downgrading” from Vista to XP is not as difficult as you may think, but it does entail some time-consuming operations. Many online sources claim to offer techniques for reinstalling XP without having to reformat your hard disk. Based on my research, however, deleting the Vista partition and installing XP in its place is arguably the easiest approach. Moreover, this method ensures a clean install that is uncontaminated by Vista leftovers.
Note: In certain cases, you may be able to undo an XP-to-Vista upgrade, even without an XP installation CD, by following the instructions in Microsoft article 933168. The article takes a command-line approach to the XP restoration, and also requires that you have a windows.old folder on your root drive. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
February 25, 2009 by
Jason
1. Find bottlenecks
From what we’ve seen so far Windows 7 is already performing better than Vista, but if your PC seems sluggish then it’s now much easier to uncover the bottleneck. Click Start, type RESMON and press [Enter] to launch the Resource Monitor, then click the CPU, Memory, Disk or Network tabs. Windows 7 will immediately show which processes are hogging the most system resources.
The CPU view is particularly useful, and provides something like a more powerful version of Task Manager. If a program has locked up, for example, then right-click its name in the list and select Analyze Process. Windows will then try to tell you why it’s hanging – the program might be waiting for another process, perhaps – which could give you the information you need to fix the problem.
2. Keyboard shortcuts
Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts.
Read More»
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February 16, 2009 by
Jason Following the same strategy that it applied with Windows Vista as the operating system was making its way through the development process, Microsoft is now releasing the developer tools and resources designed to permit building on top of the Windows Media Center component in Windows 7. Made previously available via Microsoft Connect, the Windows Media Center Software Development Kit 6.0.2009.0106 Beta for Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 can now be accessed by the general public.
It is important to note that as far as the actual application programming interface goes, the latest release of Windows Media Center SDK 6.0 for Windows 7 Beta is similar to what the company already delivered to developers for the Milestone 3, pre-Beta Build of Win 7.
Speaking on the Windows Media Center Software Development Kit for Windows 7 Beta, Charlie Owen, product manager on the Media Center team said: “This has been available for beta testers via Connect for a while now and we finally got it posted for everyone.” Read More»
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February 05, 2009 by
Jason Although a PC used for writing doesn’t need to be a high-performance computer, its performance can be improved by a good partitioning scheme. The biggest boost comes from my Paging partition on drive H, which is found on my second physical disk. I use this partition to boost performance in the following ways:
Move the paging file there. A well-known method for improving performance on a Windows-based computer is to move the paging file (pagefile.sys) from its usual location on drive C to its own separate partition on a separate physical drive.
Keep the Paging partition small (4 GB). By default the initial size of your paging file is 1.5 Ă— RAM and its maximum size is 3 Ă— RAM. So if your computer has 1 GB of RAM, which is pretty good for a desktop productivity computer, then setting your Paging partition to 4 GB gives you more than enough room for your paging file without wasting disk space that could be used for other purposes like storing data. Read More»
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February 03, 2009 by
Jason 1. Upgrade Your RAM
Yeah, the most obvious tip but people hardly upgrade it. RAM these days is very cheap, especially if you buy it through Amazon or eBay. When I checked Amazon, the price of 1 GB RAM was around $20-$30.
2. Get Rid of Unneeded Software
Most PCs come shipped with unneeded software. Uninstall all of them. I’m sure there are better alternatives to those software. For example, my PC came shipped from hp with lots of bloatware such as HP Image Zone, Norton AntiVirus 2004, Record Now! CD & DVD Burning software etc. I uninstalled all of them and replaced them with better software like Picasa and Nero.
3. Keep Only One Browser
This is part of the getting rid of unneeded applications but I decided to separate it because so many people have 3, or even 4 browsers installed on their computer. I used to do this; I used to have Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Now I only have Mozilla Firefox. Yes, I even removed Internet Explorer! Read More»
Posted in Computer | 1 Comment »
February 02, 2009 by
Jason 1. Turn off unnecessary animations. When maximizing and minimizing windows, Windows does a little animation before the window goes away. Going into the “System” section of the Control Panel and turning this off in the Advanced Features section can reduce the amount of memory used by Windows, resulting in a more responsive operating system. Also, in this section, turning off shadows for the mouse cursor and shadows for windows can reduce memory and increase performance. This is definitely worth looking into.
2. Turn off startup items. Turning off items that start whenever you log on can decrease logon time drastically. QuickTime likes to start itself the second you log on, so turning it off is a good idea; if you don’t use QuickTime at all then you won’t ever need the process, and starting QuickTime manually is always an option. Other startup items to look out for are Google Update and instant messengers.
3. Run as few applications at once as you can. Just because you have a dual, quad, or even octo core processor doesn’t mean you should abuse it. Read More»
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January 21, 2009 by
Jason
What, exactly, are supercomputers? The clue is in the name, really: they’re powerful computers capable of calculating many millions of floating operations per second (FLOPS) essentially, they’re very, very fast.
While any array of powerful computers, such as a modern-day web server which consists of several motherboards (the main circuit board of a computer) running in parallel can be considered a supercomputer, generally the term is reserved for machines that dedicate their entire hardware to one complex task at any given time.
Take the NEC Earth Simulator in Japan, for example, which was created specifically for modelling weather problems associated with global warming. Or the world’s fastest computer, BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, which simulates the behaviour of biomolecular structures and protein folding. It’s capable of 600 trillion FLOPS (tera-FLOPS or TFLOPS), whereas, the six-year-old Earth Simulator is only capable of 36TFLOPS. BlueGene/L won’t hold the top spot for long, though. Supercomputers twice as powerful will be online soon. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware | No Comments »
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