Jake Horsfield (P3/D1) PURPOSE OF SOFTWARE UTILITIES

VIRUS PROTECTION Antivirus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove viruses. Most software also protects against other types of malware, such as key loggers. One disadvantage of antivirus software is that it can impair a computer’s performance because they use your computer’s resources by scanning the files on your hard drive for viruses. Some antivirus software also scans websites for viruses while you’re browsing them. This can slow down your browsing experience. However, viruses can slow down your computer and so removing them will result in an increase in your computer’s performance.

FIREWALL A firewall is a software security system that controls the incoming and outgoing network traffic and determines whether data should be allowed through or not. Many operating systems (e.g. Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X) include software-based firewalls to protect against threats from the public internet. Many routers also contain firewall components.

CLEAN UP TOOLS Most internet browsers allow you to delete cookies from within the browser, so third party software isn’t usually needed. Deleting cookies may increase the speed of your browser as the amount of cookies builds up over time and many of the small files are unneeded and take up space on your hard drive. Again, most internet browsers allow you to delete internet history from within the browser, but you can also delete them from within the control panel Some operating systems (for example Microsoft Windows) come with defragmentation software built-in, however there are many software packages that allow you to do this if your operating system doesn’t come with one.

DEFRAGMENTATION Defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the storage device. As a result, your PC can access files from your hard-drive faster. Solid State Drives (SSD’s) aren’t usually defragmented as it gives little or no benefit. Defragmenting an SSD can actually reduce its lifespan by unnecessarily writing data to it. Some operating systems come with defragmentation software, but there are many alternatives, for example: Disk Defragmenter Diskeeper Norton SpeedDisk

DEFRAGMENTATION EFFECT ON PERFORMANCE Before defragAfter defrag PCMark score3,114 3,162 Startup (seconds) Shutdown (seconds) Source (The best results are in bold) These results show that there was a slight improvement in the PCMark score, a 49 second decrease in startup time and a 14 second increase in shutdown time.

DRIVE FORMATTING Most operating systems come with tools and software to format storage devices, however third party software allows you to have much more control, for example you can create/remove partitions, change the file system etc. Formatting storage devices can improve performance by freeing up unused space.