Two Little Tricks to Help Make Your Computer Easier to Use

Do find that Windows often slows down unacceptably when you have multiple programs running? Do you have a hard time remembering to turn your browser on in privacy mode every time you use it? These two little tricks below should help you.


Making sure that all your tasks have enough processor power

Some programs need so much processor power that they end up causing other applications running to slow down or stutter. By itself, a Blu-Ray movie running in one media player window, for instance, can bring everything else to a standstill in an under-powered computer. If your computer has a multi-core processor, you can put an end to this problem. You simply need to tell each resource-hogging program which processor cores they are allowed to use and which ones they need to leave alone for your other applications to use.

For the most part, Windows does tend to manage processor core assignments well on its own. You should only try changing these settings if Windows doesn't seem to do a good-enough job and you find your computer stuttering from time to time.

To change the processor assignment of a program, you need to first open Task Manager (by right-clicking on the task bar at the bottom of your screen and clicking on Task Manager). In Window 8, the Details tab in Task Manager shows you a list of all the programs that you can change processor assignments for.

You need to find on the list whatever resource-heavy process you are targeting, right-click and then select Set Affinity . In the Processor Affinity dialog box that opens, you get to uncheck all the processors that you don't want the program to use.

This way, there will always be one or more processors left for other programs.


Private Browsing

Choosing privacy mode on your browser doesn't ensure complete privacy - it only ensures that no records of your browsing are stored on your computer. Nevertheless, privacy mode does offer a degree of privacy.

It can be easy to forget to turn on privacy mode sometimes, though. You may only notice once you get on with using your browser. There is a convenient solution to the problem - you can make your browser open in privacy mode by default.

Whatever browser you use, setting it to open in privacy mode requires a minor command line change. It's easy enough - you need to right-click on the shortcut to the browser on your desktop or elsewhere, click on Properties and look for the field named Target . This field displays the path to the program's installation folder. You need to click in the Target field, move the cursor all the way to the end of the path displayed and then type in a space followed by a word of code. What code you type depends on the browser you use. it's always the trade name that the browser uses for its privacy mode.

• In Chrome, you need to type in the code -incognito .

• In Internet Explorer, you need to type in -private .

• In Opera, you need to type in -newprivatetab .

Firefox is slightly different. In this browser, you need to open Options, find the Privacy tab and then under History, choose Never remember history in the drop-down menu.