Do you own a laptop? They are perhaps the most popular form of PC, due to their great balance of performance, mobility, and portability. Many people nowadays choose to use a laptop for their work, instead of the more traditional desktop PC.
Particularly if you use your laptop for work, but may also be true if you like to game on your laptop, you’ll want to get the most out of your laptop’s performance. To get some info on this, we spoke to TechQuarters. This London-based company provides managed IT services to business across the region. According to them, there are a number of ways to fine tune the performance of your laptop, which we will get into below.
- Customise Your Display Settings in Your OS Settings
Your laptop’s display is one of the biggest demands on power in the whole system, because it is the primary output and the way in which you interface with the computer.
For example, you can configure the brightness settings. For example, in Windows 10 and 11, the system may automatically adjust brightness; but you can make sure that brightness can only be adjusted manually. This way, you can keep the brightness down, and brighten your display at your leisure.
- Configure Performance with the Manufacturer Software
Nearly every laptop maker now includes a package of preinstalled software that is designed for configuring performance on the device. Some people may consider this simply bloatware; however, once you learn to use this type of software, you can do a lot to fine tune your computer’s performance. The manufacturer software will usually have options for things like configuring battery settings, pre-sets for processor and fan performance; if you have an Intel system, there are also programs for adjusting graphics settings and hard disk settings.
- Keep Your Software Up-to-Date
This is one of the easiest ways to get the most out of your laptop performance. All software requires updates and patches, because developers are constantly monitoring and analysing the performance of the software they produce, and usually find ways in which they can improve performance, fix flaws that they find, and close loopholes that might lead to security breaches. Most managed IT services company London businesses rely on, such as TechQuarters, recommend businesses keep their software up-to-date – especially their operating systems. For instance, Microsoft offer two types of ongoing updates for Windows: Cumulative Updates and Windows Updates. Cumulative updates are for improvements to the functionality of apps and programs, whereas Windows Updates are for maintaining OS functionality.
- Restart Your Laptop Every Day
A restart for your computer is sort of like getting a really good night’s sleep for humans. Restarting your computer gives it an opportunity to cool down and reboot properly. The longer your laptop runs non-stop, the more likely that glitches and freezes will occur; and in general, your laptop will performance more poorly. Therefore, restarting your laptop, and allowing it to reboot properly between each session will ensure your hardware and software is running healthily.
- Consider Installing Hardware Upgrades
Now, if you are taking every other measure to maximise performance, and you are still somewhat unsatisfied, then you may want to consider hardware upgrades.
There are many things you can do to configure your device for the best performance, but performance can only be as good as the hardware its using. Rather than purchasing a new device, you can get the most out of your laptop buy upgrading to get more use out of it. Below are some examples of hardware upgrades you can perform on a laptop.
- Battery – most laptops have a user-serviceable battery; meaning you can remove it yourself. Your battery plays a big role on performance, so upgrading it can make a big difference.
- Hard Drive – the hard drive stores all data and software on it, so it is very important. A hard drive that can read and write data quicker will lead to a faster laptop. If you have a mechanical hard drive, consider upgrading to an SSD. Your laptop may even have an additional slot for you to add a second hard drive.
- RAM – random access memory also contributes to the speed of a laptop. RAM is one of the easiest hardware components to replace.
