I was surfing the Internet the other day and ran across a glowing review of a new eBook offering over at PCSecrets.com. The review was so good, I started to doubt the reviewer was legit, but the premise of the guide was too good to ignore.
The new book, written by Penn Chan, someone we've all heard from once or twice in the PC repair forums, claimed it could make any PC run faster and smoother within a few hours, just by doing some simple maintenance on the PC. It was a bold claim and one that PC owners everywhere will perk up at hearing.
But, as a long time PC owner, I had to put it to the test. I've seen a lot of so called "tricks" that do little more than turn off all your features and call it "faster". So, before I would call it a hoax or a full blown solution, I figured I'd give this new guide a test run and report back with my thoughts.
The Test Run
I tested the guide over the course of a week on an old PC I have in my basement – one that's rarely used anymore and hasn't had any maintenance done in two or three years at best. I did some basic benchmarks to confirm that the computer was in fact awful and ran slower than when I bought it.
The PC which was built for me in 2004, was top of the line at the time. It should run anything that came out within about two years of them with ease, but I can't even get World of Warcraft to boot up properly any more, so you can imagine it's not exactly cruising along.
I did the maintenance outlined by Penn every day for the entire week, and made sure to use the PC as much as possible, just doing some basic web browsing, Facebooking and YouTube – the usual nonsense I do when I'm half asleep.
The Results
Then, on day 8, I did a new set of benchmarks. I was blown away. Everything – and I mean everything – had improved at least 100%. Some things were performing 3 or 4 times better than they had before. Not only did World of Warcraft run now, it ran at a blistering 60 frames per second.
It boot up in about 15 seconds, rather than the two minutes it used to take. It opened web pages instantly, it shut down in seconds. This was the computer I had bought in 2004. I was blown away.
The lesson? Don't judge a guide based on it seeming too good to be true. PC Secrets
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