Sluggish PC?

[pacifichrono]

I just read this to-the-point article in the latest issue of Journal of Accountancy (the official publication of the American Institute of CPAs) called "How to boost your computer's performance." I'm going to apply most, if not all, of the article's recommendations to my recently-new ASUS desktop. The author states that a high-performing PC should boot up in 20 seconds...mine took about 50. And I thought I had a lean, clean machine! I'll report back on how my ASUS fares after "surgery."

In the meantime, I scanned the article for those with interest...you can ignore my yellow highlighter:

http://www.pacifichrono.com/BoostPCPerformance.pdf

[JP Chestnut]

Stop looking at so much porn.

[pacifichrono]

Stop looking at so much porn.

I'm retired...what else am I supposed to do with all that free time?!!!

[JP Chestnut]

Stop looking at so much porn.

I'm retired...what else am I supposed to do with all that free time?!!!

Do prostitutes have an early bird special?

[pacifichrono]

Stop looking at so much porn.

I'm retired...what else am I supposed to do with all that free time?!!!

Do prostitutes have an early bird special?

My last such foray was 1967 in the Philippines. You wouldn't happen to be a blue-eyed 47 year-old Filipino, would you???

[HapaHapa]

My laptop is 10 years old. Speed it up? Why bother trying. I just need to buy a new one.

[pacifichrono]

My laptop is 10 years old. Speed it up? Why bother trying. I just need to buy a new one.

That was the author's final recommendation!

[braeburn]

If you can handle the change or embrace it..... Drop a Linux OS on any of those machines and you will be surprised at how fast a 10 year old machine can suddenly be.

Ubuntu to start is easy to install, there are lighter *nix flavors out there but are alittle more involved to install and get software with.

I'm looking at a Chromebook pixel and dropping Unix on it or a dell developer edition with a possible dual boot.

Not looking at Windoesnt 10 for years.

[pacifichrono]

I don't want to be a downer, but I would not blindly trust an article that says
"On July 1 2015 a workstation cost about $6875 and I found that a comparable system at pricegrabber or Sam's costs $850 to 930".
It shows the author is very ignorant PC-wise.
Also, booth speed is not really an indicator of the PCs performance, my 5 year old shitty PC I bought for $399 booths in 15 seconds because I installed an SSD.
You can have a top of the line asus purchased yesterday but if it has a regular hard drive it will be much slower.
That doesn't mean yours is inadequate and mine is a beast.

Most of the procedures in the article are not going to be game changers: if your PC is new and you didn't purchase the cheapest option available, you will be able to run office without any issue for at least 3-4 years, don't worry.

Keep in mind the typical audience for this article consists of partners, managers, and principals of professional CPA firms, where the equipment they purchase is typically much higher end than home or small office systems because of the complexity and diversity of software they are required to run.

[apnk]

I could've made my laptop faster, but I decided that I was done with Windows and bought a 13in Macbook pro. So far I really like it.

[JP Chestnut]

I don't want to be a downer, but I would not blindly trust an article that says
"On July 1 2015 a workstation cost about $6875 and I found that a comparable system at pricegrabber or Sam's costs $850 to 930".
It shows the author is very ignorant PC-wise.
Also, booth speed is not really an indicator of the PCs performance, my 5 year old shitty PC I bought for $399 booths in 15 seconds because I installed an SSD.
You can have a top of the line asus purchased yesterday but if it has a regular hard drive it will be much slower.
That doesn't mean yours is inadequate and mine is a beast.

Most of the procedures in the article are not going to be game changers: if your PC is new and you didn't purchase the cheapest option available, you will be able to run office without any issue for at least 3-4 years, don't worry.

Keep in mind the typical audience for this article consists of partners, managers, and principals of professional CPA firms, where the equipment they purchase is typically much higher end than home or small office systems because of the complexity and diversity of software they are required to run.

My mom was a partner at a good sized firm for years and is now cfo at a huge ag place, and I've never once seen something at her office that would do what I use a computer for (besides the pr0n). It's not like a CPA is building structural economic models on 200 gigs of data.

[toxicavenger]

If you can handle the change or embrace it..... Drop a Linux OS on any of those machines and you will be surprised at how fast a 10 year old machine can suddenly be.

Ubuntu to start is easy to install, there are lighter *nix flavors out there but are alittle more involved to install and get software with.

I'm looking at a Chromebook pixel and dropping Unix on it or a dell developer edition with a possible dual boot.

Not looking at Windoesnt 10 for years.

Ubuntu works good on even some of the most basic machines out there.

[pacifichrono]

I don't want to be a downer, but I would not blindly trust an article that says
"On July 1 2015 a workstation cost about $6875 and I found that a comparable system at pricegrabber or Sam's costs $850 to 930".
It shows the author is very ignorant PC-wise.
Also, booth speed is not really an indicator of the PCs performance, my 5 year old shitty PC I bought for $399 booths in 15 seconds because I installed an SSD.
You can have a top of the line asus purchased yesterday but if it has a regular hard drive it will be much slower.
That doesn't mean yours is inadequate and mine is a beast.

Most of the procedures in the article are not going to be game changers: if your PC is new and you didn't purchase the cheapest option available, you will be able to run office without any issue for at least 3-4 years, don't worry.

Keep in mind the typical audience for this article consists of partners, managers, and principals of professional CPA firms, where the equipment they purchase is typically much higher end than home or small office systems because of the complexity and diversity of software they are required to run.

My mom was a partner at a good sized firm for years and is now cfo at a huge ag place, and I've never once seen something at her office that would do what I use a computer for (besides the pr0n). It's not like a CPA is building structural economic models on 200 gigs of data.

You might be surprised. When an audit team descends on a client (even the smallest Fortune 1000 company has revenues of $2 billion!) they are equipped with a massive array of systems, tools, and security to employ in their quest to render an opinion on that client's financial statements.

Starting with the very best enterprise-level security and disaster recovery systems available, these CPA firms must treat their client's data with the utmost care and security. They will be subjecting the accounting and operating data they retrieve to comparisons against very large financial databases and sophisticated algorithms to gain insights into their client's financial activities and performance. They will be importing the client's accounting database into their own analytical system, and subjecting it to federal and (multi) state income tax calculations, fixed asset depreciation, etc., as well as control and documentation of the audit status of every single account in the client's books.

The CPA firm also needs real-time access to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), accounting and reporting regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and IRS regulations. These are needed for the firm to accurately assemble the client's global consolidating and consolidated financial statements, including all required footnotes thereto.

In addition to these (and MANY other) processes performed on the client's data, the CPAs must also manage their own data: time and expense budgets for each component of the audit, including the reporting of CPA time (by audit line item) daily, and the periodic billing of the client (I skipped about 87 steps here!).

Although it's been many years since I worked as a CPA myself, I have worked very closely with numerous CPA firms during my many years as a CFO and controller. (A "real" audit partner or manager would probably throw up reading my inadequate summary of their system requirements..... )

[ikkoku]

if it's fairly new and you haven't put much files/apps on it yet, do a clean install... I do that on all my machines. just grab necessary files from manufacturer's website.

if you have plans to upgrade to Win10, this would be a good time to do an upgrade and clean install at the same time.

[pacifichrono]

FYI:

I went through all the author's recommended steps on my recently-purchased ASUS PC (AMD A10-6700 CPU; 12GB RAM; 2TB HD), except I didn't assign a static IP address on my network, and I didn't rebuild my computer's search index due to its newness.

My computer's boot time went from 50 seconds to 20 seconds, and I tend to be pretty anal about keeping my computer 'clean,' running various cleanup utilities almost daily, and frequently monitoring my computer's startup folder.

I'd say it was a worthwhile exercise.

[toxicavenger]

FYI:

I went through all the author's recommended steps on my recently-purchased ASUS PC (AMD A10-6700 CPU; 12GB RAM; 2TB HD), except I didn't assign a static IP address on my network, and I didn't rebuild my computer's search index due to its newness.

My computer's boot time went from 50 seconds to 20 seconds, and I tend to be pretty anal about keeping my computer 'clean,' running various cleanup utilities almost daily, and frequently monitoring my computer's startup folder.

I'd say it was a worthwhile exercise.

I don't know if he also told you to also limit what starts up when you start your computer. To many things tend to be set to start every time you log in.

[pacifichrono]

FYI:

I went through all the author's recommended steps on my recently-purchased ASUS PC (AMD A10-6700 CPU; 12GB RAM; 2TB HD), except I didn't assign a static IP address on my network, and I didn't rebuild my computer's search index due to its newness.

My computer's boot time went from 50 seconds to 20 seconds, and I tend to be pretty anal about keeping my computer 'clean,' running various cleanup utilities almost daily, and frequently monitoring my computer's startup folder.

I'd say it was a worthwhile exercise.

I don't know if he also told you to also limit what starts up when you start your computer. To many things tend to be set to start every time you log in.

He did, but that's one of my standard practices anyway.

[toxicavenger]

bloatware removal is a big one so i always do a clean install asap