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Craplets & Bloatware

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What's New at PC Pitstop, April 2005

IN THIS ISSUE

• Top Dawg 2 Challenge Details
• System Cleanup and the Anti-Spyware Blues
• A Common Thread with Spyware and Steroids
• RAID Juices Hard Drive Performance
• Performance Tip: Eye Candy Causes Speed Decay

Top Dawg 2 Challenge Details

PC Pitstop's second Top Dawg Challenge is your next opportunity to show off your top-notch hardware setup! This Challenge is sponsored by Western Digital; the top two performers in two categories (AMD and Intel) will be the lucky recipients of a Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive. There will be a random drawing for another two drives, so you'll want to enter even if you don't think you have the fastest system. We're giving away t-shirts and hats too!
http://pcpitstop.com/tinylink.asp?TopDawg2

System Cleanup and the Anti-Spyware Blues

When your system is infected with spyware and adware, you're often desperate to get it cleaned quickly. That makes you a target for scammers and unscrupulous companies that are more interested taking your money than solving your problem. We've put together a list of common scams and tricks these companies use:
http://pcpitstop.com/spycheck/antispywareblues.asp

If you have any doubt about whether a company or product is legit, stop by our forums and ask. Also take a look at our Spyware and Viruses forum for tools and step-by-step cleanup instructions:
http://pcpitstop.com/tinylink.asp?ThePit

A Common Thread with Spyware and Steroids

PC Pitstop CEO Rob Cheng has some thoughts about what the recent steroids scandal in baseball has in common with the spyware scourge that we all endure on our PCs. Are spyware makers so blinded by their greed that they are willing to ignore the obvious abuses that involve their products? Is there anyone out there willing to blow the whistle on the unethical behavior of spyware distributors?
http://pcpitstop.com/news/rob/rcheng0504.asp

RAID Juices Hard Drive Performance

As one of the slowest components in your PC, the hard drive is an excellent candidate for some tender loving tweaking. One great way to improve performance is with a Redundant Array of Independent Drives (RAID). By spreading data across multiple physical drives, you can reduce data transfer bottlenecks and improve overall speed. Our MaxPC article on RAID will tell you more:
http://pcpitstop.com/news/maxpc/disk.asp

Performance Tip: Eye Candy Causes Speed Decay

The standard Windows XP look has colors and animation galore. With a less-gaudy look, you can squeeze more performance out of your PC. To change the look, right-click the My Computer icon and select Properties. Then click the Advanced tab. Under Performance, click the Settings button. On the Visual Effects tab, click the "Adjust for best performance" option. Or, click Custom and check just the features you want to keep. On LCD displays, the "Smooth edges of screen fonts" option improves clarity but may also cause a large performance loss depending on your video board.

About PC Pitstop

PC Pitstop, LLC (http://www.pcpitstop.com) was formed in February 2000, and offers users a unique way to make sure their PCs are running fast, stable and secure--all through a free, Web-based interface.

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