performance

The latest developer's build of Firefox launched today, bringing hope to the small but vocal minority of Firefox stable users who have been plagued by the browser's persistent memory and performance problems that Mozilla is not ignoring their complaints. Firefox Aurora 7 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and includes changes that Mozilla said in a blog post announcing the release will result in 30 percent less memory use "for many users."

Another big memory usage change comes to the "garbage collector" process, which, when working properly, cleans out from your system … Read more

Two questions: 1) Have you ever tried to delete or rename a file or folder, only to have your own PC tell you no, you can't do that because it's locked by another program or process? 2) Don't you have enough frustration in your life without software piling on? EMCO UnLock IT takes care of Question 2 by dealing with Question 1. It's freeware that can unlock files and folders that are locked by system processes or other programs when you receive an Access Denied error message. It does this by attempting to close any processes … Read more

Diskeeper 2011 automatically takes care of hard-disk fragmentation as it occurs, making the manual defragmenters we're all accustomed to a thing of the past. For any Windows users experiencing a lag in hard-disk performance, this hassle-free tool is a fantastic option.

Shortly after installation, Diskeeper analyzes all the volumes on your computer. The data it collects is used as a baseline for the Performance Reports it generates from that point on. These reports let you know how many fragments the program has eliminated as well as how, exactly, it has improved your PC's performance. While most users won'… Read more

It's been a while since Intel announced Thunderbolt, but now the first storage solution based on the new peripheral standard is finally available for purchase, if you can afford it.

Promise, one of the hardware vendors that participated along with LaCie in the Intel Thunderbolt event with demo products, announced today that it is now shipping the Pegasus line of high-performance RAID storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology. LaCie, on the other hand, says it will ship its own Thunderbolt device sometime this summer.

The line includes four- and six-bay external storage enclosures that offer between 4TB and 12TB of … Read more

Many PC users love to tinker with the hardware and software on their machines. Other people consider any time they spend using Windows' built-in system tools a total waste. In between are those of us who understand the value of a little preventive maintenance--as long as it doesn't take all day.

Windows 7's arsenal of maintenance and system-tweaking utilities has been enhanced through the addition of new tools and improvements to existing programs. Unfortunately, one of my favorite Windows utilities isn't available in the Home Premium version of Windows 7: the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) is … Read more

New Relic is one of those unusual companies where an entrepreneur who helped create an entire product category--application performance management (APM), a billion-dollar industry--comes back for a do-over that aims to put his first company, Wily, out of business.

New Relic CEO and founder Lew Cirne (the company name "New Relic" is an anagram of his name), spawned the first SaaS-based APM start-up in 2008 as an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital. Today, New Relic is announcing what it says is the first Real User Monitoring solution from a SaaS vendor.

Cirne compares real user monitoring with … Read more

Smule's Magic Piano for iPhone brings the fun and beginner-friendly piano app to the small screen. Already a popular music-app pick on the iPad, Magic Piano offers up a unique touch-screen music experience, letting you play both classical and pop music hits by following and touching beams of light on the screen. If you don't like following along in Song Book mode, you also have the option to play freestyle in Solo mode, which lets you configure the keyboard into interesting shapes (circular, spiral, and other layouts) to add to the fun as you play.

Part of what … Read more

If you can't decide whether to get the Samsung 470 solid-state drive because it's so expensive, there's now another one that's even more tempting--the Vertex 3 from OCZ.

At around $500 for 240GB, the OCZ SSD isn't any cheaper, but it is much faster than the Samsung 470 and supports the new SATA 6Gbps standard (SATA 3). Most existing computers, however, support the popular SATA 3Gbps (SATA 2), which has data cap speeds of close to 300MBps.

SATA 3, available in computers powered by Intel's new Sandy Bridge chipset, on the other hand, offers twice that speed. And the Vertex 3 delivered in our testing, emerging as one of the fastest internal drives on the market.

Sharing the same design as a standard 9.5-millimeter, 2.5-inch internal hard drive, the Vertex 3 also includes a drive bay converter that helps it take the place of any 3.5-inch hard drive. This means it will work in any case where a traditional SATA hard drive, be it a 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch, would be used.

The OCZ Vertex 3 is also available in 120GB and 480GB capacities. The former costs around $250, and the latter is outrageously priced at more than $1,800.

To see if the drive is worth the investment, check out CNET's full review.… Read more

When you view the "Disk Activity" section in Activity Monitor, you can see the read and write speeds of the system's hard disks both in current values and in a small history graph. Some people have wondered if current SATA II hard drives included in modern Macs have 300 MB/sec transfer rates, then why when using them the drives only transfer at around 25-35MB/sec, even when copying large files.

The 300MB/sec transfer rate for SATA II drives is in actuality the maximum speed of the SATA bus, and not the true speed of the … Read more