Speed Up Boot Up Time with Soluto

Betsey Blanche — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:30:00 GMT

I own a laptop that runs Windows Vista. When I made the switch at the beginning of grad school I was so so pleased. There are photographs of me actually hugging the thing after taking it out of the box. However, as with all laptops certain problems began to appear over time. For instance, turning my laptop on became a precarious business. Sometimes it boot up immediately and other time s I would sit and stare at the welcome screen for long periods of time (once I waited twenty minutes) before getting tired of it and forcing it to turn off. So I finally took some action. For starters, I removed a few things from my hard drive because I had less than 10% free which puts it in what I like to call "the danger zone."

But the booting issue went beyond hard drive space. In my case - and I'm confident I'm not alone in this - my computer simply had too many things all trying to start at once. Windows makes it fairly easy to find the list of processes and applications starting while your computer is booting up but it's easy to feel like you're in over your head with that approach. It takes time to figure out what each item is and whether or not you need it. In comes Soluto. Soluto gives you the information you need to make informed decisions about what can stay and what should go, ranking items in three categories: No-brainer (remove from boot), Potentially removable, and Required (cannot be removed). Additionally, Soluto gives users a description of what the item does (for almost all items) and allows you to pause it, delay it or take no action. This takes away some of the guesswork. If after reading the description you're still not sure what to do you can rely on the wisdom of the masses and see what other users have chosen to do. Another nice tool but also an indication that Soluto is collecting information on users. From what I've seen and read however, Soluto has indicated that the information is strictly about your machine and not personal data. The information they gather adds to their "PC Genome" which is how they are able to make recommendations to users.

I used Soluto this morning and, despite the fact that I removed some items manually about a month ago, I was still able to shave about 25 seconds off of my start time. Not too shabby.

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Edit PDFs Without Buying Expensive Software

Betsey Blanche — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:41:00 GMT

Ninety percent of the time, I prefer communicating via email rather than making a phone call, mailing something or (especially) faxing. This is especially true when it comes to applications or other PDF documents. Like the library computers, most individuals only have access to Adobe Reader, rather than a more sophisticated version of the software which allows you to edit and save PDFs.

An easy workaround presents itself in the form of FillAnyPDF. This site allows you to upload a PDF so that you can enter text into blank fields and then save the document. (FYI, you have the option of creating an account or just going straight to editing your document). By doing so, you can simply email the form on to the intended recipient rather than mailing or faxing it. The site also allows you to change font size, blackout, whiteout or highlight text. After entering all your text, click the download button at the bottom of the page and then save the PDF to your computer or memory device of choice.

I will caution you that there is no clear information on the security of the site so you may want to think twice before using it for confidential information. I have, however, seen the site recommended by several blogs which take security into consideration when evaluating a product or service which I find comforting. What other workarounds do you use for editing PDFs? Share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Speed Up Boot Up Time with Soluto

Edit PDFs Without Buying Expensive Software