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This week shall henceforth be known as “Free Week.” Every post this week is going to focus on one thing I’m passionate about that you can do for free. From listening to music to getting into shape, you’ll find it here.

Buying a new computer can be really expensive. I should know, I just finished saving for my own new computer this month. It’s exciting, that’s for sure, but spending that kind of money isn’t easy.

But sometimes you need to upgrade—computers are notorious for growing old fast, and a slow/unstable computer can cause all kinds of frustrations and problems. Especially if you’re sharing it.

Well, here are some tips to help take your old, run-down computer from slow and annoying to speedy and impressive. It’s nothing like buying a new machine, but most computers just need to be cleaned out a bit and reorganized to show a huge jump in performance.

It’s kind of like taking your car to the shop for a tune up, only you can do this all yourself without getting your hands dirty and without paying a cent.

Just follow these easy steps and you’ll definitely see a boost after it’s all said and done:

• Clean the registry: Over time, this can get pretty clogged up. I use CCleaner to get the job done. Quick and easy.
• Clean the hard drive: Run Disk Cleanup (Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Cleanup) to get rid of some unnecessary junk on your hard drive. You’ll be glad you did.
• Be safe: Make sure viruses and spyware aren’t slowing you down by downloading the best, free protection out there: Spybot Search and Destroy and Avira Antivirus.
• Defrag the hard drive: Smart Defrag is a good one for this. Quick, free, and easy. Can’t beat that.
• Be lean and mean: You know all those little icons on the bottom right of your screen? Some of them have a purpose but most don’t. You can change this so that only the ones you really need come on every time you start your machine. To control this, go to your System Configuration Utility (Start->Run, type: msconfig, then go to the Startup tab) and uncheck any programs you don’t need. You’ll want Avira running to protect you, but otherwise experiment with booting up with as few of these programs as you can. It’ll take a load off your CPU.
• Buy new RAM: This one will cost some money, but it’s money well spent. This will physically upgrade what your computer can do and will give it more room to do multiple things at once. Head over to 4AllMemory, type in the computer you own, and it’ll tell you exactly what memory to buy. And don’t worry, installing this is really easy, just do some searching on Google and you’ll find it. I even found someone going step-by-step on the very computer I have!

After all of that, you should see a boost in performance. If this still isn’t enough, then you may want to consider a new machine, but it’s always good to do as much as you can with what you have before shelling out more money.

Oh and for those of you wary of installing new software you’ve never heard of on your machine, I totally understand. All of the software I mention here I can vouch for and so does CNet, a great source for news and tools. And 4AllMemory is a great store with great customer service. I’m not getting paid to say that, they’ve just been great every time I’ve bought through them.

If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll gladly do what I can to help!

* FYI, my update process didn’t go as smoothly as possible. Which can happen with computers—just be prepared to exercise your patience like you’ve never imagined…

Photo by Vision Valley Photography

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• Free Week: Exercise for Free