“Ways To Speed Up Your Computer”

Complete Transcript of
Anthony Crea – Diskeeper Interview
on Let’s Talk Computers
June 2 2007
Host Alan Ashendorf

Alan:  Today on Let’s Talk Computers, we are going to be taking about ways that you can speed up your computer system. Our guest, today, is Anthony Crea, Reseller Manager with Diskeeper Corporation. And welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Anthony.

Anthony:  Thanks, Alan. I’m glad to be here.

Alan:  You’re getting a brand new computer and when we get this brand new computer, right off the bat, it is fighting us, isn’t it?

Anthony:  It is; what I have found is that even the new computers – once you get it home, you think you are starting off fresh and clean, when in fact, you’ve got all sorts of software on that you never, never really thought was going to be there and all sorts of little processes that start running in the background and from the get-go, you’ve got a slow, slow machine.

Alan:  When you get your computer home, the first thing you do is you turn it on and Windows, says, “Oh, this is the first time that we are installing Windows and I’ve got to put a bunch of files onto the system!”

Anthony:  They want you to obviously, make sure you’ve got the most recent files or the most current, updated files, which is fine. That’s one of the things you start doing. You start installing files and you start moving files around and doing all of those wonderful things that you didn’t think you needed to do.

Alan:  We also have this problem. For a manufacturer, what they call OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), it is easier for them to ship one disk than it is to partition the disk the way it really should be. And what happens is that you have all these Trialwares, you have all these software that you are never going to be using and every time that you do anything, every write operation is messing up that hard drive.

Anthony:  That’s the thing more and more folks are realizing, is that they don’t need all those extra programs of Trialware, extra different things on their hard drive. They get a 500 or 750 GIG hard drive and before they know it, it’s full of this other stuff – plus, they really don’t need that much space for all those programs. They need to keep their files in a separate location.

Alan:  It would be a lot easier from a consumer’s point of view that once a person brings a brand new home and turns it on, it gives you a list of the programs that it could install onto your computer and asks you for your permission to put them on there - unfortunately, it makes the decision that you’re going to like everything that it has.

Anthony:  That’s the double-edged sword. You get a good deal on a computer; you do get good deals on computers, these days. But, part of the “good deal” is the manufacturers want you to try the software. They have arranged deals with the software manufacturers and other manufacturers and they want you to give this a try, so they presume that you are going to love this stuff or you’re even interested in having this on there – and they have pre-installed it to make easy for you.

Alan:  And it’s even worse, because most of this is going to be 30-day or 60-day or even 90-day timeouts, so that after it times out, it doesn’t even work, but it’s still on the machine, taking up space and annoying you.

Anthony:  It’ like someone constantly tapping you on the should to remind you of what you already know or to tell you that, “Hey, by the way did you forget about us?” Over time, it’s more annoying than not.

Alan:  Most of this software goes out to the Internet when you first turn your computer on and sees if it has a new version that it can tell you about to have you install on the computer so that you have the latest and greatest computer software that you really didn’t want in the first place!

Anthony:  Yeah, I mean there are things a savvy user can do, but for most people, they feel stuck.

Alan:  We always advise the consumer: First of all, partition your computer. Split that big C drive up into separate drives – and why?

Anthony:  The main reason is that you want to make sure you documents are kept in a separate space. Let’s say your operating system goes hey-wire; there’s a problem with your programs and you need it to run a clean boot or any number of things. Your documents remain safe by partitioning.

Alan:  So, you put your documents on a separate drive? I like to call them D, for data – so that when you back up your data, which is the most important thing that’s on your computer, you’re just backing up your data; you’re not backing up your temporary Internet files; you’re not backing up your computer programs and you’re definitely not backing up the operating system.

Anthony:  Absolutely and most documents (what do we have, an old Word documents and things like that)? They don’t take up all that much space unless you’ve got a lot of graphics. It allows you more control over your system.

Alan:  I’ve seen people that back up their computer all the time and they wonder, “Why is it taking so long to back up and why is it taking so much disk space?” When you look at their temporary Internet files, just for example, they’ve got 10,000 little files sitting in there because when Microsoft installed Internet Explorer, it says, “We’re going to use 20% of the hard drive as temporary internet folders”. And 20% of a terabyte of space is a lot of space!

Anthony:  It’s a lot of space and it’s space that if you’re smart about, you’d rather have for your own use.

Alan:  I suggest breaking up that big C drive into three parts. Let C: be your computer programs and your operating system. Have D: be for your data and then set up a smaller partition that I call E: for extra throw-away, garbage, whatever you call it and this is where you put your Temp files; you put your Temporary Internet files and these you could care less about being fragmented, can’t you?

Anthony:  You really don’t care about that stuff; because it’s useless stuff. It’s stuff that you will never need to pay attention to. It’s better left in a separate space.

Alan:  Well, when we talk about the big C: drive that has our computer programs and it also has our “swap space” – that part of the disk really needs to be defragged almost all the time, doesn’t it?

Anthony:  You want to make sure that it’s maintained in peak operating condition. One of the ways to do that, besides doing what we’ve just talked about, is to make sure that those fragments are kept together; they are no longer what we call “fragmented” and we take care of it by running our software on it.

Alan:  And your Diskeeper 2007 for the Home will actually load and just get completely out of the way; you don’t even have to know that it’s there because it’s running in “real-time”?

Anthony:  There are so many bits of software that announce that it is doing its’ job. We don’t have that ego that needs to be stroked, I guess in the Software World. We will load; we’ll do our job, but we don’t need to tell you.

Alan:  It’s like having anti-virus software and you’re running a virus scan. You’ve got this big screen that’s showing you everything that it’s doing and it’s really pretty and it’s sitting there and it’s taking all the CPU cycles of your computer. It is not allowing you to do anything else, because you have a captive audience, because it has to run until it’s completed – because if you pause it or kill it, you have to start all over again.

Anthony:  What we have found is that most people don’t like that. We’ve come up with Software that’s going to do what its supposed to do. Once you install it, it disappears in the background. It doesn’t use system resources to do its job and it makes sure your system is operating, as it should.

Alan:  But people do not like to install software. A lot of people use what use what comes with the computer and they don’t want to install anything else because they are afraid it’s going to mess up their machine or it’s going to be installed wrong and they can’t get it off.

Anthony:  And it’s true with a lot of software out there, which is why we listen to those problems. We know that those problems exist and we have designed Software that you really don’t need to push more than a few buttons, once it’s installed. You don’t really need to set it up, as it were and be smart about doing all these different settings and things like that. It’s very simple, “Please help my computer run at peak operating efficiency”. “Would you like that? Yes. Okay, good.” That’s pretty much how we operate the Software.

Alan:  I’ve been using Diskeeper Software every since you first started with Diskeeper Software and I know that you listen to your customers, because some of the suggestions that I’ve asked to be put into it, the next version, lo and behold, there it is!

Anthony:  I don’t want to sound facetious about this, but where else are we going to get this information? I know that other software manufacturers tend to think they know what the consumer wants or what the customer wants, but sometimes that’s not a match. So, we have tried this approach where our customers are the ones that are using the Software. Let them tell us what the problems are and not just with our Software, but with their day-to-day lives. How do they use their computers? What would help them? We try to find those solutions.

Alan:  And I see a lot software programs that have been designed by programmers. And when a programmer designs a piece of software, he is usually designing for him to use. And he’s very knowledgeable; he knows what he wants to get out of it and it’s like a utility program – “Here; it does what I needed it to do. I don’t need a good interface”, but a user or consumer doesn’t think that way.

Anthony:  Most consumers I know who use their programs don’t think that way. Plus, programmers like a challenge. And they enjoy that kind of maze of getting somewhere because at the end, they’ve succeeded and conquered. But, most home users – it’s just when they turn on their television – they don’t want to know the details; they just it to work.

Alan:  A software program that’s been designed by a programmer. The programmer wants that every time it does something – let’s saying defragging – he wants to see everything that’s being done for color, a wonderful description of how long it took, what it’s doing, moving things around on the screen. And before you know it, software has captured the whole computer and you!

Anthony:  Exactly. And our Software, even though it’s completely automatic and runs without having to do anything about it, we still have a solution for those programmers who love to look at things happen. We can have them install it and run it manually. But, there’s absolutely no reason to do that. We left it in there because we know there are some folks who love to watch stuff happen.

Alan:  Of course, you have software that has to be scheduled at certain times in order to run at certain times. A lot of companies used to shut down after 6:00 and do their backups and then do their defragging and then it would be ready for the next day. But, even Home Users, don’t do that anymore, because as soon as they get home, the first they want to do is get on the Internet.

Anthony:  Exactly. So, when’s the downtime? Why do you want to wait until you’re out of gasoline to put gasoline in your car? You want it to run the way it’s supposed to run – all the time; not at some off-hour.

Alan:  That’s the way a lot of people think. It’s only going to defrag my system when it slows down. “You show me a reason that I need to defrag my machine and then I’ll do it.” What they don’t realize is that it’s like boiling the pot. It’s getting hotter and hotter; you’re not even realizing it.

Anthony:  Now, more than ever with folks who have all of their audio files or they are downloading and saving video files on their computers. They will notice that those files sometimes have little glitches in them or they take longer to load. There are any number of problems that occur are that are a direct result of the hard drive being fragmented.

Alan:  This is not expensive. Diskeeper 2007 is very inexpensive for any Home User.

Anthony:  It’s reasonably priced and when you think about it – the value and the time saved over time – it’s remarkable, how effective it is.

Alan:  The more your computer is slowing down the more you’re not enjoying, doing things that you really would like to do. When the Internet is slower, your document is slower, loading. And if you have a database that has a lot of records in it, it may be taking a lot longer to save one record than what you really want it to do.

Anthony:  We want people to have the experience that they imagine they want to have, as opposed to so much of the time, that reality of, “This is taking forever to boot. This is taking forever to save. This is taking forever to open”. We want to change that perception of computers.

Alan:  Somehow, I didn’t buy my computer to sit here and watch it defrag and having me watching the screen! Whether it’s being on the Internet; whether it’s writing a document; whether it’s in my spreadsheet or it’s just sitting there playing Solitaire – I don’t want a slow computer!

Anthony:  I think that was the whole idea, to make or lives a little bit easier and more fun and being able to do the things we want to do – not to have us do this other thing. “I have to take care of my computer. I have to do these tasks that are required; otherwise, my computer won’t run.”

Alan:  By keeping a very defragged computer, you are saving wear and tear on the hard drive and from a consumer’s stand point, if I have to replace a hard drive, that’s money out of my pocket. I can’t go out to eat or go to a show or even go shopping.

Anthony:  Exactly. Most people have become comfortable saying things like, “Well, the computer has slowed down. I’ll replace the hard drive”, which costs real money. It takes a couple of days. All of these things we’ve become accustomed to saying and doing. We have changed the perception of that, with having our Software installed.

Alan:  What’s really slowing my computer down is I’m going to get a bigger hard drive. When they move all the files over, it doesn’t take them long to fragment it again and you’re right back to the same scenario, “My computer is slowing down and now I’ve just spent money for nothing!”

Anthony:  And you keep buying more and bigger stuff. And it doesn’t solve the problem; Diskeeper solves it.

Alan:  I somebody would like to find more information about Diskeeper, where would they go?

Anthony:  They would go right to our website; it’s http://www.diskeeper.com

Alan:  And you have free, trial version that we can download and put onto our machine and actually see what it does help us speed up our computer?

Anthony:  And that’s what I tell folks; don’t listen to me. I can tell you all about it, but the best way to experience is to down load it and put it on your system and see what happens.

Alan:  Anthony, it’s been our pleasure to have you as our guest here on Let’s Talk Computers, showing us how we can speed up our home computers. And we look forward to having you back again, real soon.

Anthony:  Thanks again, Alan. It’s been my pleasure.