Want Flexi to Perform Better?
Getting your Windows system optimized will help any program perform better. Here are just a few tips to start you on a journey to get the most out of Flexi Sign & Print as a beginner or an expert.
3 Non-Technical Ways to Speed Up Your Computer
You research, and research, and decide to buy a smoking fast laptop or computer. You get it set up and, wow, it's great! Then in over the next few months, it seems like it's getting slower and slower and crashing more and more!
I think we have all had that experience. What's going on and how can you get back some of that speed and stability?
Get Rid of Files and Clean Up That Hard Drive
If you've had your computer for a while, likely you've got files everywhere and many, many of them you'll never use again. But if you're like me, you just feel like you need to keep them around…just in case.
Use this program: SPACESNIFFER. It's completely free and does a great job of finding all your files and showing you file sizes. I bet you'll find plenty of them that you can then move to another location like cloud storage or an external drive. It is recommended to run SAi Flexi with 8GB of RAM and if you can free up space and keep your C: drive at about 30-50% or more of free space, you'll see significant improvement in computer speed. Be sure to read the instructions for use.
Look mostly at folder like Documents, Desktop, Music, and Downloads. Once you see these folders, just click on a square to dig a little further and when you see something you might want to move or delete, right click on it and choose open. This will take you to the folder where you can then decide what to do.
Be careful not to move or delete essential files, rather look for files by date and size. Likely you'll find old jobs, downloads, or other file you don't use any more that you can safely move or even delete. However, if in doubt just leave it.
Remove Temporary Files Regularly
Even if you do not do the above, here's an entirely safe way to clean up a bit of space on your hard drive and improve computer speed. Remove any temporary files. These are files that hang around when your computer crashes or sometimes do not get deleted by the program that created them. Doing so will also help Flexi to run more efficiently because it will have more RAM to work with.
It's easy to rid yourself of these file by doing the following:
1. Open the Windows File Manager.
2. Type %tmp% and press enter.
3. Delete anything it finds.
You're perfectly safe doing this, Windows will not allow you to delete files that are necessary for normal operation.
Organize Desktop Icons Into Folders
Organizing desktop icons into folders cleans up your background, and it also cuts down your computer’s RAM usage. Your computer has to load each individual icon when you don’t organize your desktop, which takes up a lot of RAM space. If each icon is in a folder, then your computer only needs to load each folder. Just make sure to keep your Flexi Sign & Print desktop icon close by!
Everything on the desktop is scanned on startup. So if you have 50 folders with tons of junk in them or gigs of large files on the desktop, then it can degrade performance and slow startup time. One user writes "I have had over 50Gb sitting on my desktop, and my computer ran like crap (Intel i5 with 8Gb ram and 1TB hard drive). Once I cleaned my desktop, it ran like a dream again."
By the way, that person needs to upgrade the computer, right? But that’s another blog…
Finally, if you move some large files into a folder on the desktop, consider moving that folder to another drive, like D: etc anything but the C: drive that has your Windows system files. Once you move it, right-click on that moved folder and drag it back to the desktop, but choose "Create Shortcut". Now the desktop will still have the location of the folder you need, but it's just a shortcut, and much easier for Windows to manage.
Want to know even more? Attend one of my webinars! Find out more at www.thinkmutoh.com or www.mutoh.com. You will not be disappointed!
About the Author
Mark Rugen is the world's expert Flexi instructor. He has been in the sign and print market for over 35 years. He is an expert in Flexi, color management, Adobe products and much more. He offers much of his knowledge and experience in webinars, videos, and other learning tools. Mark is currently the Director of Education for MUTOH America. MUTOH America is the leading manufacturer of wide format printers.
