Getting the Most Out of Your Windows XP Netbook

By: Joe Gottuso Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Netbooks are all the rage these days. They’re convenient, portable, and just plain cool. Unfortunately, they’re relatively underpowered compared to their laptop and desktop brethren. That’s why it’s important to get the most out of your netbook. Like any other system, there are a few things you can do to keep your system running at peak performance.

Hard Drive Maintenance
If you have a netbook with an HDD inside, you’ll benefit from regular disk cleanup and defrag. Once every 2-3 months, it’s a good idea to run disk cleanup to clear out unused files and disk defrag to restructure your data so it can be accessed faster. Both can be found by clicking Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools.
Solid State Drives have no spinning platters or moving parts. It is, however, much smaller on average than HDD in terms of storage capacity. A disk cleanup is very useful in this case. Disk defragmentations are generally not seen as necessary with SSD, as the information is not on a spinning platter, but a chip with millions of transistors.

Graphics
Video cards and drivers are almost identical throughout the world of netbooks. Intel GMA cards and drivers are in just about every netbook out there. Unfortunately, the simple BIOS doesn’t allow you to address the memory in most netbooks, but you can give it a little pick-me-up. GMA Booster, which is donationware (free to use, but must be reinstalled every 10 days unless a donation is made to the creator) is a great way to boost performance without worrying about the problems normally associated with overclocking. On average, I’ve noticed gains in performance by up to 30% when using GMA booster, with no real increase in the card temperature.

Edit Display Settings
Windows XP is the operating system most often loaded onto netbooks these days. Various forms of Linux may run smoother and are much thinner operating systems, but they don’t compare to the compatibility of Windows. Here are some simple visual performance techniques to make your xp windows open, close, and operate smoother without losing the feel of XP:
Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings
Set the visual effects settings to adjust for best performance, then select only
-Show shadows under menus
-Show shadows under mouse pointer
-Show translucent selection rectangle
-Smooth edges of screen fonts
-Use a background image for each folder type
-Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
-Use visual styles on windows and buttons

Turn off System Restore
System restore takes up to 12% of your hard drive’s space to back up previous saved states of your computer for recovery purposes. Removing system restore can free up valuable free space on your drive, especially if you’re running off an SSD with only a few gigabytes of storage.

Disable Unused Windows Services
Windows services, while useful, often contain many processes that your typical user will never need. The goal to streamlining the efficiency of your Windows machine is making sure that you’re only running what you need to run. For fresh install, you should only need these services running:
-COM+ Event System
-DHCP Client
-DNS Client
-Event Log
-IPSEC Services
-Workstation
-Shell Hardware Detection
-System Event Notification
-Protected Storage
-Network Connections
-NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
-Plug + Play
-Print Spooler
-Remote Procedure Call
-Secondary Logon
-Security Accounts Manager
-Uninterruptible Power Supply
-Upload Manager
-Wireless Zero Configuration

Power Management Settings
If you’re not too concerned with battery life, you can juice up the settings on your netbook to feed max battery to the computer. To do so, click on the battery in the task bar, or go to Start -> Control Panel -> Power Management and alter your settings to a desired configuration. Unfortunately, no battery power settings compare to the power supplied when plugged in. If at all possible, during times of high power consumption, i.e. streaming video from the internet or playing video games, you’ll want to plug in to A/C Power for the best performance.

With these tips as well as proper care and attention to maintenance, you can ensure that your netbook will perform better than the day you took it out of the box!