On my main PC and at work I use the excellent John’s Background Switcher to randomise my wallpaper and, in the case, of work display different ones across my multi-monitor setup. It works well and, due to the amount of time I’m usually on them, changes regularly throughout the day.

For my Netbook, however, it’s different. Due to its short bursts of use, changing regularly isn’t so important and, at the same time, I need a program that’s compact and uses as few resources as possible.

Step forward Craig’s Random Wallpaper Changer. This has no options, no GUI interface. Nothing. You simply drop it into the folder that your wallpapers are stored in and then create a shortcut to it in your Startup folder. It will then randomise your desktop background on startup. And that’s it. It then finishes and uses no more resources.

It’s a superb idea and I highly recommend it.

With short battery lives and small resolution screens Netbooks, unlike many other computers on the market, could so with some specific software for their use.

Now, not all of those I’ve found are specifically designed for Netbooks, but all are relevant. And they’re designed for Windows XP.

Battery Display

If your Netbook didn’t come with model-specific battery display then you’ll be left with the rather weak XP default. My favourite options is BatteryBar, although there is also Power Meter Plus.

CPU Accelerator

Mz Cpu Accelerator does a simple thing, but it does it well. It increases the priority of the current application that is in use. If, like me, you normally just view one application at a time, such as Firefox, then this work brilliantly.

Display Improvement

F.lux is a rather curious utility that makes the colour of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day – warm at night and like sunlight during the day. Obviously this is neither specific to Netbooks nor Laptops in general, but due to the nature of Netbook being used anywhere and everywhere, often on a lap and up-close.

I run it on my Acer and don’t notice it. But that’s a good thing – tell it to return to normal and you will notice the difference. But otherwise it remains discreet and just does what it says it will.

Drive Image

If your hard drive is made by Maxtor or Seagate, then you can download the free MaxBlast or DiscWizard software from their sites. This is a re-badged version of the, usually chargeable, Acronis True Image software.

If you have a Maxtor hard drive then they sell the rather more obviously badged Acronis True Image WD Edition.

USB Boot Disks

With a lack of CD drives in Netbooks, the ability to boot from USB keys is essential in the case of any problems. UNetbootin will download one of a number of OS’ and install them onto a USB key ready to be booted from. Not only can you choice from their rather long list, but you can also add your own options.

Performance Booster

Ahh, if only XP could have the ReadyBoost technology that they use in Vista and Windows 7, where a USB key can be used to increase performance. But you can! eBoostr is an XP equivalent of ReadyBoost. I’ve not tried it myself, but there is a trial to download and it then costs from £13 depending on your requirements.

Power Management

Including a battery meter, Notebook Hardware Control allows you to control and modify CPU and battery information on your system. What functionality is available is pretty dependant on your system, but it’s worth giving it a try. But watch out for that huge EULA during installation…

HotKeyz (added 15/07/2009)

A wonderfully discrete and compact piece of software, HotKeyz allows you to create shortcut keys for running applications.

Update: Read more Netbook software recommendations

Pick up any PC magazine these days and you’ll find it includes an article about speeding up Windows. And because of the popularity of netbooks, they are more often referring to XP in preference to Vista.

The only problem is that most of these articles get it wrong.

The solution to a slow Windows is not to start switching off functionality. Most people are referring to these articles because their existing system has got slower and slower over time. Why should you then have to switch off Windows functionality to restore the speed you once had?

But before I get started, I’ll share one tip with you. Every year I wipe my hard drive and rebuild Windows from scratch. No, that’s not technically right, as I only do this once. Here’s what to do..

1. Reinstall Windows. This is a good time to ensure your backup strategy works as it will accurately recreate the pain of, say, your hard drive crashing.
2. Install all the appropriate Service Packs and most important applications (those that are unlikely to change and don’t have regular updates – your office applications, for instance).
3. Make all the changes to Windows settings that you require (look and feel-style settings).
4. Don’t copy your documents or anything else personal that you’ve backed up.
5. Now, use image copying software to create a backup of the entire disk at is currently it.

So, every year you can rebuild your PC with the image you created – all you have to do is re-install the rest of your applications¹ and your documents.

Actually, I’ll share another tip with you. Ignore most of what you read about improving XP performance. Most of it involves changing system settings and even modifying the registry – the pagefile, cache settings, network all come in for a good recommendation. Sadly, the vast majority of the advice is rubbish. If it was true 3 service packs down the line, don’t you think Microsoft would have made the change itself? Indeed, researching for this post I came across a prolific Microsoft employee² who posts on sites debunking most of these myths.

So, what does work? Well, there are various ways for ensuring your PC remains at its peek of efficiency (or, at least, the best you’ll be able to). I do these once a month but the timing is up to you – if you’re getting a lot of problems fixed each time you run it, it may indicate that a more regular approach may be required.

1. Uninstall software. As well as using disk space many will be running components in the background that will be slowing your computer down. Sounds obvious, but go through the list of installed programs and remove any that you simply aren’t using. Use JavaRa to remove old copies of Java.
2. Make sure your software and drivers are up-to-date – these updates will often be more efficient and, even if not, are generally of an advantage to have. There is lots of software out there for checking whether software is up-to-date – FileHippo is my favourite – but I’d advice avoiding any that update drivers as I’ve only ever had problems from these³.
3. Run CCleaner – not just the main cleaner but the registry cleaner as well⁴. This will clear down any redundant files from your file system and registry. I’ve tried other similar programs but have often found them to have damaged the registry – CCleaner has never done this to me.
4. Use CCleaner to review and modify which programs are run during startup (click on Tools and then Startup). If you’re not sure what a program does, simply Google it.
5. Uninstalled programs often leave empty folders behind – use Remove Empty Directories to suggest and, alternatively, remove empty folders.
6. Now you’ve got your PC as clean and crap-free as possible, you will need to defragment it. File fragments are created as ever-expanding files are split into different parts so that they can be slotted onto your hard drive. Defragmenting will put all the files back together and make them quicker to access. Some defragmentation programs can even more the files around on your hard drive so that they are more efficiently accessed (e.g. some parts of the hard drive spin quicker than others, so putting regularly accessed files in these faster areas will improve performance).
7. Defragment your PC using JkDefrag. Its default settings will be just fine, but will only work on your main system drive. If you have others you’ll need to investigate the parameters that can be passed to the program. This is a superb program, not very easy on the eye and not overly user-friendly, but it does its job incredibly well. It even comes with a screensaver option that will defragment your drive when the computer is not in use.
8. Now run PageDefrag – this will defragment locked page files (these are files that are used as “virtual” memory)
9. Lastly, run RegDefrag. Like your file system your registry can do with the occasionally clean, especially if CCleaner has been busy with it!

And that should be it. If you still have speed issues after all this then think about how much more software (and hardware) you’ve installed since it was a bit more speedy. It could be hardware to blame – running a regular benchmarking program might highlight problems. Otherwise, you may have got to the stage where you hardware simply can’t cope with your current build – memory is usually the quickest way to improve this situation (not just more memory, but quicker memory).

1. another tip here – keep a spreadsheet of the applications you have installed along with links to where they can be downloaded [↩]
2. assuming he wasn’t bogus [↩]
3. the type of problems that normally involve blue screens and system restores [↩]
4. make sure you back up your registry before running this [↩]