Steveer Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Today's topic is when starting over may be a better choice than trying to fix something,

specifically a slow Windows machine. If you're a Mac user, all the tips in this episode

apply to you

except the Windows-specific stuff. So listen and gloat, but I assure you your turn will come

someday. The quick and dirty tip is to skip trying to find out why Windows is so slow and instead

just reinstall from scratch. Ron writes in, what can I do to speed up my computer? It seems like I waste hours every week waiting for my

computer to start up, open a web page, open a program, etc. Do you have any tips to get it done

quicker? Furthermore, yesterday, Grammar Girl was contemplating losing her laptop for several

days while a repair service tries to get it up to speed. I couldn't

let her do that. Let's discuss. It's a well-kept secret that I started long ago, learning to

program computers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, down the street from where a teenager named Bill Gates

was founding Microsoft. The difference? I went to a big-name engineering school, learned good software engineering principles, and got really good as a programmer.

He dropped out of school, skipped programming classes, became the richest man in the planet,

and established an initial policy of hiring only untrained programmers who weren't, quote-unquote, polluted by knowing, say, how to program.

Bitter, me, Not at all. Okay, very bitter, but my therapist

says I'm getting better. Every day, in every way, I am a worthwhile person. I'm a worthwhile person

with a three-year-old Windows XP laptop. I literally don't use it. I installed

XP and it sits in my office as a file server. Last month, I used it to travel for the first time

in over a year. It was so slow it took minutes to open a window. Why, Ron asks. So do I. Who knows it could be viruses, disc fragmentation,

registry fragmentation, spyware, adware, malware, menswear. People will tell you all of those things,

mainly so you'll buy their special program or pay for their repair solution to your agonizing

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