Tips to Keep Your PC Running Smoothly

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A slow computer can be quite troublesome and may really affect your work. Given here are some simple tips that you can use to fix errors and speed up your PC.

Use a Registry Scanner Tool

A large bloated registry, filled with loads on unwanted, obsolete, and incorrect information, easily gets unstable and fragmented and as a result, considerably deteriorates the performance of your PC. Therefore, the first tip to keep your PC running smoothly is to maintain a compact, error-free, healthy Windows Vista registry. In order to do this, you must regularly scan and remove unwanted information from the registry.

You can easily perform this task using a reliable registry scanner tool. You can download a registry tool that meets your requirements from the Internet. Registry tools have a user-friendly GUI-interface and you can easily use their options to perform many registry maintenance tasks, such as scan and remove unwanted information from the registry, defrag the registry to make its files contiguous, and backup the registry.

Regular registry maintenance, not only helps you maintain your PC in a good working condition, but also enables you to repair and prevent several system errors, such as DLL errors, driver errors, and ActiveX errors.

Use a Disk Cleanup Tool

Over time, the hard disk of your PC gets filled up with several unwanted files. Therefore, your next step to improve the performance of your PC is to free up some disk space. You can do this with the help of the Disk Cleanup tool. You can open this tool from Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools.

Disk Cleanup is a one stop tool to compress old files, delete unwanted Internet Explorer files, empty the Recycle Bin and get rid of unwanted program setup files. You can also use this tool to free up disk space by uninstalling unwanted applications and Windows components, and also delete old System Restore snapshots.

Use a Disk Defragmenter Tool

After you have freed up disk space, you must defrag your PC. Defragging helps in making files and folders on your computer contiguous by collecting bits and pieces of a single file stored all over the hard disk, and then putting them together in adjacent data blocks on the disk. Defragging reduces a lot of load from your hard disk, makes data access a lot faster and consequently speeds up your computer.

Use Antivirus and Antispyware Tools

Any system speed up process is not complete unless you are sure that the system is free from virus and spyware infections. Viruses add several malicious files and entries in the registry and infect your applications with malicious codes to alter their normal function and generate errors. Spyware programs not only slow down your PC, but also steal your confidential data and trade it with external sources for malicious purposes.

Therefore, you need to regularly scan your PC with reliable antivirus and antispyware tools. Keep these tools updated with the latest definitions to ensure that your PC is protected against the latest malware. You must also turn on the real time protection feature included in these tools to prevent malware infiltration in the first place.

via : lovebeats

Cheap Phone Card

If you need to make a lot of international calls, maybe you need to keep in touch with your loved ones outside your country or just for your work purposes, you should consider yourself to get a phone card rather than using a land line. It's much cheaper. You can save your money, or at least with the same expenses, you can have longer conversation. And you will not receive the unexpected amount of phone bill.

Check out TheRichCom.com. They provide cheap prepaid phone cards to the international destinations. Ranging from Asia to the middle East and Europe. You can check out their large selection of prepaid phone cards. And buying it online is simple and easy. Simply choose the country and click 'Get Phone Card'. That's it. All phone cards and calling cards they are delivered online instantly.

So next time if you want to get yourself a prepaid phone card, just visit TheRichCom.com.

Man vs Woman from Engineer's Perspective

Born to be Obese?

The brain circuitry that controls appetite might be wired differently in some people, and that could predispose them to obesity, researchers suggest.

The study was conducted in rats, not humans, and yet it could ultimately lead to novel obesity treatments, said Philip Smith, director of the Office of Obesity Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

"It is not just about drugs that modify short-term appetite," he said, "there may be drugs that stimulate development of the appropriate neural pathways. So, it is an exciting, but very early, time in this field."

The study was published in the Cell Metabolism. Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues examined neural circuits emanating from the appetite, hunger and body-weight control center of the brain -- the so-called arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARH) -- in a series of rats bred to be either prone to, or resistant to, obesity.

The team found fewer neural connections projecting from the ARH in obesity-prone animals than in their leaner counterparts. Surprisingly, Bouret said, this deficiency developed very early in life, before the animals became obese, and appeared to extend into adulthood. "Somehow, these animals are programmed to become obese," Bouret said. "The obesity is hard-wired into the brain."

When the researchers then looked at why the brains of obese rats differed from their normal-weight counterparts, they found that the neurons from obesity-prone animals were less responsive to leptin, a hormone that controls the development of these circuits, and which also signals the body's energy status and controls metabolic rate.

"This paper presumes to say, these animals must be leptin-resistant, and that is why the pathways are not developing," said Smith. But that doesn't mean they are doomed to a life of severe obesity, said Dr. Barbara Kahn, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. How they live their lives also matters.

"It is important not to 'blame' the obese person or imply that he/she is responsible for being obese," Kahn noted. "Having said that, reasonable, healthy caloric restriction and a safe and sustainable program of physical activity can help limit weight gain and often bring about some degree of weight loss. In addition, healthy eating and regular exercise can reduce the complications of obesity such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease." At the same time, she added, not everyone can wear a size 4.

"There is a certain aspect of genetics that sets somebody in a certain range of possible body weights, and then how that person lives his or her life will determine whether they are at the bottom or top of the range," she explained.

Human obesity has both genetic and environmental roots. The rats used in this study, like most humans, developed obesity when fed a high-energy diet. On a normal diet, they were heavier than normal rats, but not yet obese. "This is quite an exciting paper," said Smith, "because it links more closely to human behavior than most rodent models we have seen."

The findings also suggest a possible therapeutic approach to combating human obesity. If drugs could be designed to influence the formation of neural circuits during development and targeted to at-risk pregnancies, Smith said, "there is a good likelihood we could have successful interventions that improve the health of the mother, and which have a major impact on disease risk for the infant, during pregnancy."

A related study from Boston University researchers in the same journal found that bulking up muscle mass can lead to a general metabolic improvement in obese individuals. "Interventions designed to increase skeletal muscle mass in at-risk human populations may prove to be critical weapons in the fight against obesity and obesity-related comorbidities, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension and cancer." an accompanying editorial stated.

by Jeffrey Perkel
via WashingtonPost