The speed spur

Here are some freeware add-ons that speed up application loading and improve system performance.

Adobe Reader Speed-up: (Size 245 KB) This software disables the majority of plug-ins that are completely useless for most users. Adobe Reader Speed-up supports any version of the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader software, both Normal and Full/ Professional, from version 3.0 to 8.0 and upwards.

To configure this, just double-click the Reader Speedup.exe and select speed up radio button and click Start button. On the next screen, Select Speed-up Mode as "SpeedUp - Fast (recommended)" and click Start button and Click Finish. It also supports advanced tweaks such as disable automatic updates, splash screen on Reader's startup, browser integration, etc. To access Advanced tweaks screen, just click the link "Tweaks" on the main screen. It has the option on main screen to restore to original settings at any time. For more information, please refer the readme.txt file. You can download this from http:// www.download.com/Adobe-Reader- SpeedUp/3000-2378_4-10720728.html

FireTune for Firefox (Size 621 KB)

This is aimed at bettering your browsing experience with Firefox. According to your specific computer speed and Internet connection speed, FireTune will optimise several internal settings of Firefox for better performance.

To configure this, just double-click FireTune.exe. It is advisable to take a back-up of original configuration before making any changes. To do this, please click "Create backup of configuration" button on the main screen. Just click "Tune it" button to optimise your settings. It supports other useful settings such as "Turn on autocomplete for URLs, Optimize Firefox memory usage, etc. It has, on the main screen, the "Restore original configuration" option to restore to original settings at any time. It can be downloaded from http://www.totalidea.com/content/ downloads.php

Photoshop SpeedUp (Size 311 KB)

As its name suggests, this software significantly decreases the time it takes to load Adobe Photoshop by disabling the plugins that you may not need. There are several options such as whether to load the Adobe fonts, load the presets, and set the memory usage. You can restore the original settings at any time. Adobe Photoshop SpeedUp is freeware, works with Adobe Photoshop versions 3 through 8. Restore to original settings with a click of the Restore button at any time. You can download this from http:// www.acropdf.com/products.html

Tunexp 1.5 (Size 1 MB)

Tunexp maximises the performance of Windows XP. The tweaks are presented in five categories such as Memory and file system, Hardware, Internet, Services and Miscellaneous. The documentation is neatly presented. Please read the documentation for "Recommended action" for each setting before making any changes.

During the first run, you will initially have to choose your Windows location (for instance, drive C).

It supports the following tweaks: Disable Paging Executive, Faster Shutdown, File Allocation Size Tweak, Optimise Prefetch, Increase NTFS Performance, IO Page Lock Limit, Clear Prefetch Folder, Defrag Boot Files, Ultra-Fast Booting, Enable UDMA-66, Speed-up Windows IRQ Handling, Increase DNS Cache, Messenger Etc. This software is useful for advanced users and can be downloaded from http:// www.download.com/TuneXP/3000- 2086_4-10290929.html

M. SAMPATH

The Businessline dt. 14 7 2008