Computer help

[RynMan]

A friend of mine has started running his business from his home and has a pretty decent computer. He has asked me to basically come over and do whatever to it, to make it run better, and more efficiently for his work purposes.

Can anyone throw out a few things I could do, aswell as any nice efficient applications that I should download?

Here's what I've got:

- Install Ace Utilities (if you haven't used this program, check it out) to remove duplicate files, empty folders, analyse disk space usage etc.
- Defrag hard drive
- Run all spyware checks
- Install/Update his copy of Norton
- Install Firefox
- Disk Clean
- Setup shortcuts in taskbar etc
- Shutdown any unneeded startups and processes

Anything else that you guys can think of?

[Madison]

Install a minimum of one very solid firewall.

[Field]

You might want to have him consider buying a second hard drive that connects to his computer but is seperate from it for extra space and the storage critical work data.

That was the only additional thing I could think of off hand, you pretty much nailed all the things I did to my old computer when it started to slow down.

[Tavish]

What sort of business is he running?

[Coppermine]

You might want to have him consider buying a second hard drive that connects to his computer but is seperate from it for extra space and the storage critical work data.

That was the only additional thing I could think of off hand, you pretty much nailed all the things I did to my old computer when it started to slow down.

I'd recommend setting up two hard drives in a RAID configuration and have on mirror the other. This is a little easier than nightly backups onto external drives or using an FTP service to backup files off site. If one drive fails, the other is good to go. From there, it may be prudent to actually get an external firewire hard drive and have it backup at least once a week, but the RAID configuration should be sufficient.

Hard drives are getting cheaper too and a lot of times it's easier just to get an addition, huge internal drive that mirrors rather than backup to an external.

[acsguitar]

What coppermine said if he can figure out how to do raid.

Also download open office.

[RynMan]

What sort of business is he running?

Marketing

[RynMan]

I'd recommend setting up two hard drives in a RAID configuration and have on mirror the other. This is a little easier than nightly backups onto external drives or using an FTP service to backup files off site. If one drive fails, the other is good to go. From there, it may be prudent to actually get an external firewire hard drive and have it backup at least once a week, but the RAID configuration should be sufficient.

Hard drives are getting cheaper too and a lot of times it's easier just to get an addition, huge internal drive that mirrors rather than backup to an external.

Not sure that I know how to do this, but I'll have a look on Google for some more info. Sounds like a good idea, thanks Coppermine. I didn't think about constant backing up.....