How much time are you losing each year having a slow computer?

Being a webmaster I spend 50 plus hours a week using a computer. Spending so much time on a computer I have come to learn not only web development but also quite a bit about computers and their operating systems in general. That being said it is critical to my business that my machine is fast and reliable.

Most of my friends are not web developers or really even “computer people”. They often call me when they have an issue with their computers. Nine times out of ten it is a simple fix or they need to simply reboot their machine (by the way before you call your “computer buddy” simply try rebooting your machine. Typically this will remedy most problems). But when I actually get on their machines I notice how incredibly slow their computers are! I think to myself “how can they work like this?” and  it comes down to complacency, they just deal with it. So it got me thinking, and I made an example below.

Computer Slow by minutes per day:

10min per day X 5 days a week X 52 Weeks = 2600 a year or 43.33 hours a year wasted!

20min per day (most people are here) = 86.66 hours a year wasted!

Now let’s calculate the dollar amount:

Let’s say your sales people are pretty good at what they do. You pay them 52k a year. At 2 weeks plus of wasted time per employee X (let’s say 5 employees) = $10,000 a year wasted!!!

Now I am not implying go out and buy everyone a new PC. Just fix the ones you have. In fact for simple operations like web surfing, word docs, excel and other office programs require very little computing power. So a computer that is 4 or 5 years old will work another 5  or so years with no issues. Spend the money and hire a computer repair specialist to get those computers back to the way the ran when you first got them.

Tips to keep your computer running fast:

1. Install anti virus! Here are some good free solutions. AVAST and AVG. Both free and very good.

2. When installing new software or updates don’t be fooled. One sneaky trick software companies do is ask “would you like to do a “typical install” or “custom install”?” 99 percent of the people choose “typical” because “custom” sounds scary. Be assured all “custom” is doing is asking you if you want to install extra software and tool bars that are often bloated programs that you do not need.

3. Clean disc and de-fragment hard drive once a week. Here are instructions for XP . Here are instructions for Vista and 7.

4. RESTART YOUR COMPUTER. I have friends that have never turned of their computer. I restart my machine once a day… you should too.