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Better Performance--And Desktop Searching

The Hassle: Windows Vista's Indexer bogs down system performance as it constantly catalogs the contents of my hard drive.

The Fix: Indexing in Vista is almost as worthless as it was in XP. It takes a big gulp of resources and slows down your system. So I say disable it. From Add/Remove Programs, click Add/Remove Windows Components in the left panel, deselect Indexing services, and click Next.

Now, for a replacement, grab a copy of a great, free searching tool, Copernic Desktop Search (read more about Copernic in "Three Free Desktop Tools").

Speed Up Your Apps With Actual Booster

I'm a sucker for any free utility that claims to speed up my system, so I risked hosing my PC and used Actual Booster for a month. Windows uses priority levels to determine how much CPU time an application gets (the default is 'normal'). Actual Booster automatically sets the priority level of the program you're using to full blast.

One thing to remember, though, is that when you're multitasking, setting the priority to 'high' on one application takes processor time from those in the background. Also, if you have a brand-new, super-duper, quad-core PC, Actual Booster might not do much good. Yet on slower computers, and especially my dog-tired old notebook, I can see a big difference. One drawback: On some PCs, Actual Booster causes the mouse to stumble.