 | By Fred Langa In this column, the seventh in my series on Housecalls across North America, we see just how much space a proper PC housecleaning might free up. Nearing the end of my cross-country journey, I also take some time to ponder what I’ve accomplished during the trip. |
New England homecoming wraps up journey
In the my previous installments, you’ve seen:
- How to use some free, powerful tools to declutter a PC and speedup boot times;
- How to resolve an address conflict on a small network;
- How to test the basic security of an Internet connection;
- How to reduce the size of areas where enormous numbers of junk files can quietly accumulate;
- How some popular software can ruin the performance of some PCs;
- How to reduce fan noise in a PC; and
- How to get Scheduled Tasks to run properly if you don’t have a login password, something that’s normally required.
It felt good to enter familiar territory as I rolled into New Hampshire from Toronto. New England has a character all its own, not least in part from the ancient mountains there: the Appalachians were once as mighty as the Himalayas, but half a billion years of wind and water have smoothed the edges and worn the tops so that almost all that’s left are the rounded stumps of once-massive peaks. It’s a stark contrast to the still-jagged aspects of the Rockies, which are relative babies geologically speaking — a full order of magnitude younger than the Appalachians.
Of course, it’s also home to me, and that counts for a lot. And I admit it: I cheated a bit by stopping off at my house before heading to Hillsboro, N.H., for this year’s fourth and final Housecall. After motorbiking across the U.S. for weeks and riding back across Canada pretty much in one long push, the lure of a familiar bed, a long shower, and something other than riding clothes proved irresistible.
Figure 1. It’s good to be back (click photos to enlarge). Every part of the continent has its own appeal, but as a New England native, this kind of scene about a mile (1.6 km) from where I live feels most like home to me.
A numerical breakdown of my cross-country ride
When I got home, I pondered some stats:
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