Improve Your PC Performance in 7 steps: S.P.E.E.D.U.P.

خطوات لتحسين اداء الويندوز بجهازك فى سبعة خطوات
How often do you carry out soft maintenance on your computer?, do you really need a faster processor or bigger RAM?  did you know that, most likely the hard disk and its contents are the cause of computer slowness problems rather than the speed of your processor or the size of your RAM?.

Before buying a new processor or RAM or even a new computer, there are 7 basic soft maintenance checks that you can do yourself to improve your computer performance and help you make a better financial decision, I have gathered these checks up under the acronym S.P.E.E.D.U.P. as follows so you can remember them, remember that you need adminstartive rights to run them (or most of them):

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  Scanning for viruses and malwares: Make sure that your anti-virus program is up-to-date and enabled, run a complete virus scan for all disks. Viruses and malware can damage your computer files and/or consume processor and RAM capacities and render your computer very slow.
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  Purging of disks: Disk Cleanup helps you free up space on your hard drives. Disk Cleanup searches your drive and then shows you temporary files, internet cache files, and unnecessary program files that you can safely delete. You can direct Disk Cleanup to delete some or all of those files. **Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and finally Disk Clean Up.
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  Error checking: Run a complete check on all your disks, it is important that your hard disk is healthy for your computer to run as fast as it could, if your hard disk has errors or not functioning properly for any reason, then this exercise is useless!. **Right click on your disk, select Properties > Tools and finally Error Checking.
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  Editing of Windows Startup: Some programs while installing them decide for themselves to start automatically when Windows starts, and then keep running after that in the background without real use for you, they make the start up and running of Windows very slow as they occupy a considerable amount of space in your RAM. They do this by registering themselves in during the installation process mostly, perfect examples are: most of printing software, help & updating utilities, toolbars mounted on browsers and someother famous programs such as Yahoo and MSN messengers and WinZip. **Click Start > Run then type “MSCONFIG” without quotation marks, click on Start Up tab and uncheck programs that do not need to start with Windows, if you do not know a program then better not to alter it till you further check with an expert, or simply Google it to find out more.
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  Defragmentation of disks: Defragment your disks to tidy up and better arrange files on your disks so that Windows and programs can locate them and access them faster. **Right click on your disk, then Properties > Tools and finally Defragmentation.
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  Unnecessary programs: There are probably plenty of programs that you do not need however they are installed anyway, most of them are installed under the umbrella of other programs, perfect examples are toolbars that mount on browsers, gadgets and malware. On the other hand, think for exmaple why you need so many programs to play audio and video? really, get rid of what does not add value, if you don't use the you probably don't need it. **Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs. 
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  Playground of Windows: You must keep at least 2Gbytes free in your C drive for Windows playground, Windows needs this space to handle files temporarily specially when your RAM is full. Steps # 2 and 6 will help a lot in achieving this step.

 **For Windows XP and likely it is the same in other versions, leave a comment if not.

I very much recommend repeating the above steps at least twice a month. It is worth mentioning that most of these checks take time, so better to run them when you are not busy or during coffee or lunch breaks or leave it running overnight. It is highly recomended to run one check at a time and not simultanioualy, and to have all other programs and files closed when any of these checks is running.

Finally, there are other advanced checks that can further improve the performance of your computer, however I highly advise to have them done for you by an expert, something like: updating the drivers for your hardware with the latest versions including the BIOS, installing the latest security patches of Microsoft for your Windows, cleaning the ventilation and tunneling system of the cooling fan… etc. I will cover those in details in a future post.

Use Nokia Sports Tracker to Avoid Getting Lost (including steps to import & export workout and route files from and to Nokia Sports Tracker)

كيفية إستخدام النوكيا سبورتس تراكر لتجنب الضياع وفقدان الطريق الصحيح (وكذلك كيفية تصدير و إستراد الملفات من و إالى النوكيا سبورتس تراكر) 

This post is dedicated to all Schlumberger people who cruise deserts going to and coming from jobs: Go do a great job and come back safe.
 Do not waste money on expensive GPS navigation devices such as TomTom as they simply will not work in north Africa, same applies for the GPS navigation system in your car or in your phone, that is because the traffic information in this region is not available, i.e. roads and places are not mapped on any system in the world – as in no body done it yet - so it can not calculate routes, it will show you where you going but it will not tell you which way you should go, and if you entered the coordinates of your destination it will show you a straight line to follow!. Traffic information is available only for North America, Most of Europe, Australia and some countries in other continents such as Brazil and South Africa. For more info please visit NAVTEQ.

When in these shoes, what you can do is to record the trip with the Nokia Sports Tracker, save it as a route and then share it so everyone else will use as a guide – I will show you how in a minute, this means the trip needs to be recorded and consequently, routes will be available on trip to trip bases, which is still cool as with sharing we could build our data base of routes, in other words we will literally create the traffic information!.

Let us get started, check on the compatibility of your Nokia and download the Nokia Sports Tracker from Nokia Sports Tracker web site. The recommended phone to use is N-95.

Part # 1 : Recording the trip:

Warning: performing the below excersize while driving creates a risk of car accident as the drivers gets distracted, I very much recommend having the below done by someone else other than the driver.
1. Once installed, start the tracker and follow the screen shots below, it is important first to know where does the Sports Tracker save jobs – I will tell you later why. Hit “settings” then “General” then it is recommended to set the “Memory in Use” to memory card if you have one, otherwise choose phone memory. Just remember which one was selected. Hit “Back” twice when done to go back to the root menu.

2. Create a new workout – nevermind the terminology here as the software is made for sporting activities however it serves our case pretty much the same - follow the steps in the screen shots below and ensure that all settings are made as illustrated. Hit “Start” when ready.

3. Once done, place the phone over the dashboard facing up in such a way it has a clear view of the sky, wait for the phone to get a good GPS signal, you can confirm that when the small yellow bar with “GPS X” on it turns green with “GPS √“, you will get a confirmation message anyway. Do not start the trip till you get that, it won’t take more than a minute. If you have issues getting GPS signal then please refer to the tips at the end of this article.

Note: Ideally, you should not hit “Start” till you get a GPS signal so that you can get an accurate time of the trip, but that is minor and really up to you.

4. Once green, your phone is locked on a good GPS signal, the Tracker will start recording the trip and you can start driving, keep the phone the way it is otherwise you may lose signal and you miss parts of the trip details. On the map you will see first a small square blue dot which is your start point, and a small circle blue dot which is your current position. When you move you will see a line growing and drawing your route.

5. You could flip through the screens of the tracker and get a bigger map, trip statistics and current position statistics, see screen shots below. However, you must avoid that during recording the trip to avoid losing the GPS signal. The map in the background may be blank white, you may see some roads but that depends on whether you have a preloaded map and the internet connectivity on your phone, pay no attention to that as it is not important and keep driving as long as your route line is growing as you move. I will show you later how to view your route on Google Earth software.

Note: Your current position is marked with the circle and it is always in the middle of the screen, the square is your start point and it is moving away as you drive.

6. Once the trip is completed and you are at destination, hit “options” and then “Stop” the trip, you will get a summary message, hit “Ok” and that will take you to the root menu.

7. Recording of the trip is now completed and all is left is to create a route out of the trip and save it to follow it back and also to share it with others

8. Go to “Training Diary”, on the calendar, hit the date of your trip and it will then show you the trips you have done in that day, check date/time/distance and hit the trip you just made to open it.

9. Hit “Options”, then “Save Route As”, then give a name to your route – for now we will use “Test Route”- and then save.

10. At this point, you can use the route directly as a guide on your way back since it was recorded with your phone - in this case go straight to “Following the Trip” below, and you can send the route file to others to save it on their phones and then use it to follow your trip – in this case they must perform steps 11 through 13.

11. The only drawback the Nokia Sports Tracker has is that it can not import workouts or routes even through the Nokia Sports Tracker community website, and hence we will have to do it manually, it is very quick and easy.

12. Connect your phone to your PC and browse your phone memory or the memory card - depending on the settings you made back in step 1, you should see a folder right at the root directory called "SportsTracker", open it and you will find couple of folders and many files with the extension ".dat", some start with "R" and then nine digits.dat - these are your route files - and some start with "W" and then nine digits.dat - these are your workout files. Sort by date and select the last modified R#########.dat (which is the route file of your last workout), copy that file to your PC and rename as desired, naming the file will not affect the original name that was given to the route through the Nokia Ports Tracker “Test Route” as that is stored within the file, other phones will read this name anyway. Make sure you keep the same file extension.

13. Now you can share this file with others, they will basically do the same and connect their phone with their PC’s and place a copy of the route file you sent in the same directory "SportsTracker", once that is done, then we are all ready to use the trip you have recorded. Note that when other people open your file with the Nokia Sports Tracker, they will see the name of the route as “Test Route”

Part # 2: Following the trip:

1. Start the Nokia Sports Tracker, hit “New Workout”, before you hit “Ok” at this screen, hit “Route” and you will get list of all routes saved in your phone, select the route file you have just made “Test Route”. Hit “Ok” and when you get a GPS signal hit “Start”

2. Once you hit "Start", you will see the route "Test Route" aleady plotted on the map and your current position - the circle dot - is at either ends of it, you can now drive and follow the route to the other end, and this is how you won't get lost!.

3- For better map view, you could flip up to get the bigger map.

Tips:

1. The GPS device on Nokia N-95 is very powerful and it can produce coordinates with +/- 5 meters error at the worst case. So you are getting a realiable measurements and guidance.

2. I have recorded trips up to 500 Kms long, I am very sure that longer trips can be recorded, I just never tried that.

3. To get a GPS signal quick before you start your trip: remain stationary and place the phone facing up with a clear view of the sky. Nokia Sports Tracker can show you the GPS status as it is still connecting so that you can have an idea of what is going on. You can do this by flipping to the bigger map view, hit "Options" then "Map" then "Show GPS Fix", you will see at the top left the Satellites status 0/0 when you first start. 0/0 means number of satellites used by the phone/number of Satellites dedictedby the phone. You will get a GPS signal one the number is 4/9 or more.

4. To see the route you created or shared with you by someone else: Open the Nokia Sports Tracker, then open either the workout or the route, hit "Options" and then "Export" then "Export to Google Earth" and hit "Select", you will be given some export options one of which is to "create and send the file" so that you can bluetooth to your PC once export is made, you will then be prompted to where you want to save the file and how to send it... etc, I am sure that you can manage the rest.
5. To become more familiar with the Nokia Sports Tracker softwhere, you can read the user guide.