performance

Facebook tops one list of 'slow and inaccessible' social networks

On Thursday, Web site-monitoring firm WatchMouse released the results of a study about the performance of 104 social-media sites--social networks, blogging communities, bookmarking sites, and the like--and boldly deemed them to be overall "slow and inaccessible."

WatchMouse used its "Site Performance Index" (SPI) methodology to track the reliability and load time of the sites in question; this figure is computed by calculating the time needed to call up a site's home page and applying a penalty for each failed request. Lower is better: an SPI of 500 is considered good, whereas the Utrecht, Netherlands-based WatchMouse … Read more

Speed up Windows XP and Vista by turning off unnecessary services

The fact is, you don't need all of the services that Windows starts automatically when it boots. Disabling the non-essential services frees up memory and processor cycles for more important tasks. The trick is knowing which of Windows' automatic services you can do without: disabling the wrong service can render your system unusable. If you're careful, you can figure out which automatically enabled services your PC can do without.

Things would be so much simpler if I could just list which services to disable, but each Windows configuration is unique, so there's no way to predict which … Read more

Why a self-tuning guitar isn't a good idea

Yesterday, Gibson Guitars released its self-tuning Robot Guitar. It'll add about $800 to the price of a new guitar (it's available only on mid-range guitars with street prices over $2,000), and will compete against a self-tuning guitar add-on from TransPerfomance, which runs about $3,000, including installation.

The technology behind self-tuning guitars is far from trivial--a CPU in the guitar neck must continually monitor string tension and adjust the pegs accordingly--and I'm sure the demos are fun to watch, but I think the vast majority of guitarists will get a lot more value out of a … Read more

How deep are Leopard's changes?

Our review of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last Thursday lauded its lovely interface innovations but withheld judgment about the operating system's speed until we could put it through its paces.

Tests returned from CNET Labs on Saturday show that Leopard didn't perform noticeably faster than Mac OS 10.4.6 Tiger. (See the chart in CNET's review of Tiger.). Because Leopard's improved speeds of between 1 percent and 3 percent fall within the 5 percent margin of error, it's fair to call Leopard and Tiger even.

Lab tests explored Leopard's boot time, … Read more

Killer Download: Does your computer have what it takes?

No matter what kind of computer you're running--a brand new dual-core Alienware model or your aunt's old Dell laptop--it's hard to gauge the performance of your machine by factory specs alone. Especially with all the versions of Windows PCs out there using any number of hardware configurations; it's tough to really know how your computer measures up to today's fastest systems.

Finding complete system specs is especially important to gamers of course, but they're not alone in their need for system speed. Today's release of the graphics-intensive specs for Crytek's Crysis (from Crave, CNET's gadget blog) surely has many gamers praying their computers have what it takes to really bring the long-awaited game to life. But even if you're not a gamer, you might want to know, for example, whether your computer can handle the latest image- or video-editing software. Fortunately, you can find out in advance using a good benchmarking app. This category of software runs several diagnostic tests which check everything from processor speed and drive efficiency to the output of your graphics and sound cards.… Read more

Intel G965 Driver Update: Performance Boost or Bust?

Back in mid-August, Intel's Nick Knupffer made a promise to casual 3D gamers by suggesting that a new driver update would give systems that use the Intel G965 integrated graphics chipset a much-needed performance boost. I was highly skeptical of this claim, but wanted to put Intel's claims to the test.

To test Intel's claims, I chose an Acer TravelMate 4720-6727 laptop, which uses a 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 CPU, 1GB of RAM, an integrated 965GM Express graphic chipset with 384MB memory allocated, and running Windows XP Professional SP2. While this hardware combination is not the … Read more

HP board approves new executive pay policy

Hewlett-Packard's board of directors agreed with shareholders Thursday, passing a new policy tying executive pay closer to performance.

The company disclosed the new program, in which stock issued to executives will vest based on whether individuals meet their performance goals over a three-year period, in an SEC filing Friday.

The issue was first brought up at the annual shareholders' meeting in March. The proposal surfaced in response to shareholders' unhappiness regarding the compensation given to ex-CEO Carly Fiorina after she was removed by the board.

HP has not revealed any specifics about how performance will be measured, but will … Read more

Inside CNET Labs: Windows virtual machine performance on the Mac

Note: This post was updated on August 17, 2007, to make a correction.

With VMware's official release of Fusion 1.0 less than two weeks ago, there are now no less than four different ways to run Windows applications on Intel-based Macs. Fusion, as well as SWsoft's Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac use virtualization technology to allow you to simultaneously run the Windows operating system as a virtual machine alongside the Mac OS. CrossOver Mac 6.0 from CodeWeavers uses a different virtualization approach by building on the open-source API, Wine, which allows you to run individual … Read more

How many processors are in your PC?

These days, most new PCs have dual-core central processors (CPU). That's one chip with two complete microprocessors on it, both sharing one path to memory and peripherals.

If you have a high-end gaming PC or a workstation, you might have one or two processor chips with four cores each. An eight-core PC is a very powerful machine--in real terms, up to eight times faster than the best desktop PCs you could get in 2004. For many years, PC performance doubled roughly every 18 months; multicore technology has produced annual doubling for three years now.

But that's not really … Read more

Yahoo: 13 rules for making your web pages faster

Yahoo's Exceptional Performance team has put together a list of "13 rules for making web pages fast" and posted it on Yahoo's developer network. The list, which includes "Make fewer HTTP requests," "Use a content delivery network," and "Avoid redirects," should really help webmasters figure out what is slowing their site down.

As if that wasn't enough, the team just released a Firefox add-on which integrates on top of Firebug, a web development tool. This add-on will analyze any web page to check for how they comply with the … Read more