Think about this, more and more Olympic athletes are over 30 and some over 40. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing China has more athletes over 30 participating than any time in history. Do you realize how difficult it is to make the Olympic team in a country with a lot of athletes trying to get on the team and where there are many young athletes competing for the positions?

Dara Torres, 41-year-old swimmer for the USA, just got two Silver medals and she out swam her much younger competitor during the last leg of the relay. She has successfully balanced the rigorous training needed with being the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.

Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus, competing in the women?s single skull rowing, brings home a bronze medal and she is 36. This is her 4th Olympics, she has won three gold?s and one silver in this event in those efforts proving she has remained in top shape for many years.

Romania?s Constantina Tomescu is 38 and just won the gold in the women?s marathon. In fact at the halfway point she was in 26th place before she gathered speed to end up finishing almost two and a half minutes ahead of the second place finisher. She finished 20th in the 2004 Olympics but has improved steadily in the last four years as she has gotten older in age.

Oksana Chusovitina the 33 year old German gymnast received a silver medal on the vault. My two daughters were both involved in competitive gymnastics, I know how physicaly brutal this sport is. She has stated that if she is able to qualify for the next Olympics she will, she will be 37. She said, ?if I can I?ll do a sixth Olympics.? Is she giving up on what she loves? She says, ?I don?t feel 33, I feel 18.? She not only made the German team, she took 3rd place amongst all competitors, most of which are about 16 years old!

Jason Lezek, the US swimmer who helped Michael Phelps win the two team relays, is 32 swimming against athletes 10 to 15 years younger. He has shown that he can still compete in finals in the Olympics as well as other international events.

The ability of athletes continuing to compete at such a high level as they age can be attributed to several factors; more financial support for athletes, better sports medicine, more understanding about diet, but mental perspective and determination is at the foundation of it all. It definitely can become more difficult physically to train as a person gets older and the drive to continue must be strong. But the decisions you make based on your perceptions are the determining factor to what you will motivate yourself to do.

These older athletes are redefining what is possible as we get older. Their success shows what we are capable of when we have the vision, motivation and determination. More importantly is shows that more people are able to see themselves in this role as they continue to get older. When you can see something as possible you are more likely to find the ways to bring it about.

The demise of ones abilities begins with their perception of what is possible and not possible. So often people fall into the mental trap of thinking they are too old for something or that it is not appropriate for an older person. This is just not the case in all instances. Your physical abilities and mental drive is governed by your perceptions of what is possible, what you ?should? be doing and many times the influence of others.

This concept does not just apply to sports, any endeavor that you have stopped allowing yourself to see as possible is not necessarily dead, unless you condemn it in your mind. Take time to assess your deep wants and desires and rather than staying with restrictive perceptions, take a fresh look at it. You will discover that many times it is your own mental decisions that have stopped your progress and squelched your dreams, not your actual abilities.

Harland (Colonel) Sanders did not even start franchising his chicken until he was 65 years old, you may have heard of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What is really possible for you ?if? you were to follow your dreams without telling yourself no?

John Halderman
More life changing concepts at Effective Personal Development Blog

Is your gratitude as potent as it can be? We know that thoughts are powerful, but what is even more powerful? Thought that has emotion added and focused thoughts are far more powerful than plain thought. This is why we tend to see more of what we fervently dislike in our lives, because there are strong emotions attached to the thoughts.

So how do we add emotion and focus to thoughts about gratitude? Write down your thoughts, in a gratitude journal, to engage more of your senses. Your mind is using many more brain cells with the act of writing, thus more of your brain is engaged.

First, Your emotions will greatly increase when there is more brain involvement. And your brain will better be able to link multiple related positive thoughts to your gratitude statements enhancing positive emotional feelings. The number and strength of the neural connections in your brain actually increase with the added activity with writing. The more attention given to anything, the more it will affect your life. The addition of positive emotions will supercharge your gratitude.

Second, your mental focus is enhanced as it takes more of your mind to do the writing. Your mind is pumping out thoughts all the time, how would it know that you want specific thoughts to be more important than all that chatter? You add this importance by giving the thoughts more attention. Writing down what you are grateful for and allowing your related emotions to develop clearly moves other thoughts out of your awareness. You can truly only think one thought at a time. The act of writing helps keep you from bouncing from thought to thought. Gratitude thinking is the kind of thought you want to spend your time with, it is positive and uplifting.

Start a gratitude journal. It can be anything from a fancy hardbound journal to a simple spiral notebook, all you need is blank space to write. With a physical journal it is easier to set up a routine to use it, and it is easy to review when you want a little boost or motivation. You can establish a time of the day to pick up your gratitude journal and express your thoughts and feelings. This helps create a good habit that you will follow over time.

John Halderman

More on Gratitude, Effective Personal development Blog

Learning is one of the biggest stumbling blocks we have with eating and diabetes.

By learning when you should eat, how much you need to eat and what to eat, you can take excellent care of yourself. When making food choices, choose wisely so that you can lose unnecessary weight, lower you risk of diabetes complications and even feel good from day to day.

Our goal with diabetes is to keep our blood glucose levels at healthy levels and to prevent damage to our body caused by those unhealthy levels of glucose, cholesterol and blood pressures. This can be maintained with good eating and physical activity habits along with proper medications if prescribed by your health care professional.

When taking diabetes medications, it is best to follow schedules for physical activity, meals and snacks. Some medications allow for flexible schedules while others do not. Discuss your diet and medication routines with your doctor.

The risk of developing heart disease is two times that in people who have diabetes than in people who do not. High cholesterol levels raise that risk. Lowering the amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol and maintaining optimal body weight can help lower cholesterol levels in the blood and reduce your risk of heart disease. Eating and Diabetes definitely go hand in hand here.

With you doctors help and with monitoring results:

• Determine how many times you need to eat per day
• Determine how many snacks you can eat per day
• Determine your physical activity levels required to maintain

Remember that conditions can change as time goes by, never stop monitoring and never stop working with your health care professionals. Keep up with your diet and diabetes plans and follow them with care.

It is your life and you should make it as comfortable and as productive as you can. You can always take medications, but there is no substitute for self care.

by Randy Wood
www.diabetes-and-me.com | Randy Wood promotes Article Marketing

Tips from Diabetes And Me? Always Move - Keep It Physical

For decades, women earning their status in workplaces is becoming one of the most common news.. since early 1990?s, the growing number of career women has been shockingly shooting statistics up… some were pleased while there were those who were apprehensive.

It?s funny because a hundred years ago, this may not even be thinkable…. who ever knew that women who were dressed up like dolls and trained to be contented goddesses of the home would struggle to get out of the norm? Who ever thought that she would be able to lead a nation? Way back, women were loveable puppets… experiences through time, however, revolutionized the way people think… educated women become more aware of their rights and abilities… nowadays, women are lovingly embracing their responsibilities not just in the home but also in the society… i do think that this movement is making the world a better place… so, what?s the noise all about? We are not here to replace men but to compliment them as always.

There are now more and more mothers who are going out of their homes and helping their husbands create financial stability… some are single moms needing to earn a living. Others just enjoy career stability and recognition.

Although the figures may have initially put men in an awkward state perceiving the opposite sex as competition, however, nowadays, men are becoming more appreciative and accepting of what?s going on. To evidence this, a few shifts in home routine have taken place such as reallocation of household chores, less personal motherly attendance have paved husbands a chance to substitute; and mothers now take part in the decisions more than before.

A successful woman did not become a superstar overnight! She suffers and endures a few work-related issues left and right… she recurrently battles with machismo once in a while and maybe this is something she can never get rid of.. around the globe and anytime, harassment and violence are major problems that come her way… she is prone to a lot of mishaps… however, she keeps on.

She keeps on and people have to give her credit for that… let?s be frank.. women are closing the gender gaps as time goes by… she is redefining her success from homemaker to associate to corporate executive where she levels with if not overpowers men in achievements… do these facts make men irritable?

At some point it did, maybe it still does to a few. But there are also others who are not really bothered by such transformation… she still remains to be an unwavering emblem of beauty…she still has her grace and add to that a glowing confidence to voice out what she believes in this time… that doesn?t make her less of a person… the evolution that a woman faces in her social and career life did not only make the world a better place but also has made her more fulfilled as a person. Who dares to take that away from her? I wouldn?t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Miz Helena is an avid writer of lifestyle articles and is co-owner of Abundant World Publications which is part of a vast network of quality and affordable self improvement and lifestyle audios and ebooks

When actually, it?s not a matter of finding out ?how? to have success in your life, but rather how and where to
direct your success. The problem is not, not being a success. The thing is you actually already are very successful every day, but maybe not at what you would like.

You are successfully living your life, your body is functioning and you are thinking about something every day, all day. Now if you weren?t having any thoughts at all, I would be concerned. And since you are thinking about something, you are receiving the fulfillment of those thought requests without fail.

The universe doesn?t fail itself, and since you are a part of it you will not be failed either. Just as a plant seed always gets what it requests, so do you. So then why don?t you get everything you think you want? You want it so you must be requesting it right.

Well, again you actually are getting everything that you are requesting. I know it seems like I?m taking you in a circle here but think about this for a moment, how do you know what a tulip has requested from the universe? Well, the tulip would not be a tulip if it had requested something else. The way to tell what has been requested is by the evidence that is present.

Now, a tulip can?t request anything else, it is programmed into the bulb exactly what it is to request from the all providing source. But you and I are a little different, we have two different aspects. One, like the tulip, your physical self, has been programmed much the same way through your DNA and this is just as automatic as with the flower. You don?t need to think to keep your body running as it was designed, including all your uniqueness.

Then, the other aspect you have is your mental capacity to reason, think and choose. Sure some other creatures have a little of this aspect but nothing like we do. A cat can decide to seek out a warm sunny spot to lay in, but it can?t learn a new trade or change the way it perceives things like you can. This second mental ability is one where you decide what is in the seed - your seed. You have the ability to design what the seed will request from the universe, let?s call it your ?creative seed?.

Now this part is important to understand, just like the tulip seed and your physical body, your ?creative seed? is always activated with the universe. This means the universe is constantly reading your request within your ?creative seed?, thus it is always responding in kind. Here is the scary part, your thoughts, all of them, are the ?creative seed? which is a continuous active request link to the intelligent universe. So everything you are thinking is your ?creative seed? whether you are or are not consciously aware of it.

This is why it is so critically important to make it your main objective all day every day to discover what you are thinking and adjust it to be congruent with that which best serves what you want in your life. When you may say that you want something, but all the while your inner thoughts are pointed elsewhere and your behavior is reinforcing something else, your ?want? doesn?t hold much weight in the request seen by the universe. Your predominant thoughts and actions are so strong; the universe can?t hear what you really want.

You are right now completely successful at what you have invested your thoughts and energies to, even if you are not totally aware of them. Your experience in life has a direct correlation to what you think about and feel strongly about most of the time. There is an exact relationship to the percentage of time you allot to any thoughts and your life experience.

So if you want to be successful at something other than what you are successful at today, you will need to devote a higher percentage of your thoughts, feelings and energies in ways that are more in alignment with these desires. Just occasional lip service will not do.

All of your thoughts combined are what is included inside of your ?seed? that the universe works to fulfil for you. So ask yourself, ?How much of the volume or space in the seed is taken up with what I deeply want and how much of it is what I don?t want, don?t like, put up with or just complain about?? You are constantly creating this seed, and from this you are completely successful based on what?s in it.

To change this, you will need to take command of your everyday thinking, choose to have more of your thoughts, feelings and actions be congruent with your deep desires. Using your valuable thought time to complain, ridicule, doubt, worry, feel angry, resent someone, and many other negative type thoughts, just steal time you can be filling your ?seed? with what you really want. Plus, you will just get more in your life to complain, resent, worry about and all the rest - is that what you really want?

Some people have actually kept track, in time, of their thoughts all day long in order to discover what percentage of time they devote to certain ideas. With this you can discover what undesirable thinking you want to replace with the aligned thinking you want.

Take command of your thinking now by aligning more of your thoughts with your deepest desires, you will see your feelings and actions follow suit, then your life experience will too. Choose what you are successful at by redirecting the same tools and power you now use to get what you now have.
John Halderman

Now, you don?t actually make anyone feel anything, which is up to him or her, but you can contribute to how they feel by doing something they appreciate or enjoy. One of our deepest human desires is to feel good so everyone is open to any assistance with doing this. And I?m sure you are aware of how it is so easy for people to focus on the negative, everyone can use some assistance placing their attention on what makes them happy.

What does it take to assist someone to feel happy? First you want to discover what they would appreciate, which requires a bit of attention to the other person. Do you take the time to notice what others would appreciate or enjoy? It really doesn?t take much effort, but rather some attention. With our busy lives it can take some purposeful effort to notice what others would like and do something about it but it?s worth it.

What you do for others comes back to you in some way, so there is some secondary motivation behind your kindness to others. It doesn?t hurt to remember that you get more of what you think about in your life.

What can you do to help someone feel better and feel good about it yourself as well? Can you make a positive comment, praise or compliment? Who can you do this for? The people close to you as well as peopl]]> http://www.articlecontentking.com/self-improvement/happiness/%e2%80%9cjust-make-someone-happy%e2%80%9d.php/feed http://www.articlecontentking.com/computers/how-safe-is-your-computer-system.php http://www.articlecontentking.com/computers/how-safe-is-your-computer-system.php#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:36:20 +0000 Phil Rogers http://www.philstechnotalk.com/?p=122 Your Choice of Password May Be Letting You Down

Passwords. We have them everywhere now. Whether it?s the PIN (Personal Identification Number) for your ATM card, the password that logs you into your email account, or to set up your Internet Router, we have this need for security that our money, our personal details and our private information is kept away from people we?d rather not let near them.

However, your choice of password can let you down and even though you think you are safe, you could be leaving the doors wide open to unsavoury characters who don?t think twice about stealing your identity and looting your bank account and credit cards for as much as they can get their hands on.

There are thousands of websites that let you register and sign in with an account; each of which requires another password. It?s getting to the point where it?s difficult to remember which password you used where. And this leads you to disregard security to make your life easier.
It?s too tempting to choose a password that is easy to remember, or even use the one supplied by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, that often makes them easy for other people to guess.

Believe it or not, when faced with the pressure to choose a password, people are not very creative, and statistics show that many people choose the same ones as everyone else. Here?s a list of top-10 passwords:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

When they say ?Enter password?, it doesn?t mean enter the word ?password?! It means choose one and enter it!

If you use any of those passwords, you?ve fallen into the same trap as everyone else.

Don?t Keep Default Passwords
Here?s an example. My wireless Internet router is made by D-Link. To log in to the set up page, the account name is set by D-Link to be Admin, with the password set to ?password?. Very easy to remember, and most people don?t bother to change it.
Now, I take my wireless laptop or PDA and go somewhere and find an open wireless network. What if the router being used is also by D-Link? What if the owner didn?t bother to change the account name or password? I can now log in and change the password, thus locking out the owner from their own router setup.
I can now come back at any time and browse the computers on that network. Who knows what personal information I might find on there?
And if ?password? doesn?t work, I might try any of the ones from the above list.

Don?t Use Familiar Words
Instead of using one of the common passwords, some people resort to using the name of someone or something close to them, such as the name of their spouse, child, pet or street.
Here?s another example. When I was at university, my room-mate was a huge fan of the UK football team, Manchester City (also known as Man City). Just for kicks I thought I?d try and log into his university computer account. I knew his username, but needed his password. So I tried ?mancity?. That didn?t work, so I tried the names of their star player. That didn?t work, either. Then I remembered the name of the team manager, and tried that. I was in to his account in just 3 tries.

Don?t use familiar numbers
Just like family names, some people use birthdates. Again, these are too easy to guess.

Use a Strong Password
A strong password is one that is more difficult to guess. Here are some suggestions for creating a strong password.

Don?t use words that appear in a dictionary. If you really must use a word to help you remember (but it?s not recommended), you could try replacing some of the letters with numbers or symbols that resemble the letter. For example, let?s say you wanted to use the word GUITAR as part of your password. You could change the G to 6, the I to 1, and the A to @ to make 6U1T@R.

Use numbers as well as letters. Very often, this is a requirement that is enforced when you choose a password, but looking at the list of common passwords, people are still using simple ones such as abc123.

Use symbols. Using punctuation and symbols makes passwords much more difficult to guess than if you had simply used letters and numbers.

Use upper and lower case letters. Passwords are usually case sensitive to increase the pool of letters available when choosing the password. This makes it much more difficult to guess.

Use longer passwords. It is now recommended that the minimum length of password that you use is 12 characters, using a mixture of character types as mentioned above, and preferably a non-dictionary word.
Example: 4doFg*lf /Y7s

Remember your password.
So now that you have chosen a totally random password, how do you remember it? Some browsers can remember them for you, but what happens if your browser loses that data, or you are trying to log in from somebody else?s computer?

One technique is to choose a password that looks random but has some mnemonic attached to it.
Here?s one example I just thought of:
4&20bBbIaP
This fits in with many of our criteria; it?s what looks like a random mixture of letters, numbers and symbols, with upper and lower case.

The mnemonic for it is a line from a children?s song:
?Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?.

After the 4 & 20, the remaining letters are the initials of the words, alternating lower and upper case.
(Please don?t use this example ? now that I?ve mentioned it, hundreds of people will start using it!)

If you still can?t think of a good password, have a program generate one for you. There are a lot of free password generators on the Internet. Personally, I wouldn?t use one of the online ones ? they might be logging my IP address and the passwords I generate.

So, think creatively about your choice of password. Somebody could be trying to hack your PayPal account right now!

Diabetics strive daily to live a life of normalcy. For many it is a very difficult and troubled road. For all, diabetes is most definitely a lifestyle altering disease.

There is consistent and ongoing research through doctors, clinics, researchers and special facilities diligently searching for cures to diabetes and ways to control and prevent the disease.

Lifestyle Center of America, a residential health center provides workshops through a revolutionary program that includes a preventive plant based diet, easy to follow physical activity program and other lifestyle choices to help overcome the effects that diabetes and other chronic diseases impose on our lives.

I have had the privilege of reading and actually using their cook book, ?The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Cook Book? created by Bonnie House, Diana Fleming, Ph.D., LDN, Linda Brinegar, Linda Kennedy, and Ian Blake Newman.

The research and work that has gone into this cook book along with its ease of use and information provided makes this book exceptionally valuable to those living with or touched by diabetes.

The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Cookbook is very easy to follow and use and is loaded with information so that diabetics know what to eat, why to eat it, how to prepare it, how to cook it and so much more.

The menus provided are an excellent guide for your day to day meal plan needs. You can follow the suggested plan or change it up based on your desires and tastes. They have even put together the list of equipment you need in your kitchen to prepare your meals. They have provided complete nutrition details to aid in optimizing your food intake to your needs. They have developed so many delicious and tasteful recipes covering every aspect of our normal eating habits from breakfast, lunch and dinner to deserts. The ingredients used in cooking are explained in detail and are easy for most people to get. And it tastes good!

As most people today are consuming so much fast food and easy to grab meals, living a fast and hurried lifestyle, it?s no wonder we are at the degraded levels of health that we are. Diets and lifestyle changes do not come that easy to most. The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Cookbook can help make that change in your life much less stressful. All you have to do is choose to do it.

According to new studies, eating a low-fat vegan diet may better help manage type 2 diabetes than traditional diets. A vegan diet is plant-based and consists of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. It avoids animal products, such as meat and dairy. Such diets can also help people suffering from diabetes with their fight against other complications that seem to follow, like weight gain and high cholesterol leading to heart problems.

I recommend ?The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Cookbook? and I am using it. I hope you will do the same for your life.

Always Eat Right ? Always Be Prepared

By Randy Wood
www.diabetes-and-me.com

For Diet and Diabetes, discover the only cookbook of its kind. The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Cookbook from the gourmet kitchen at Lifestyle Center of America.
Diet and Diabetes go hand in hand. This is no secret to those touched by diabetes. Discover the real hope of controlling or stopping your diabetes, get your copy today.

Then after a few months, or maybe even weeks, the rot set in. Your PC started taking ages to start up, programs took an age to open and load your data, and then to add insult to injury, takes an eternity to close down.

So what?s going on? Why the big difference in performance? And more to the point, can you get it working as it used to again? The good news is basically ?Yes, you can?, but there are so many things that contribute to the lack of performance that it?s difficult to know exactly what is causing the problem. In most cases, it can be a combination of different factors all working against each other to bring your system to its knees.

Here is a list of things to try to get back some or all of the performance you used to get with your PC.

1 Free up disk space
We?re all guilty of saving more files, documents and images than we really need. In some cases, we save something and then cannot remember where we put it, so we end up with a lot of ?lost? files scattered around our hard disk.

Another common thing is to keep copies of files, or older versions ?just in case?. There?s definitely nothing wrong with keeping backups ? I recommend it. However, keep your backups on another disk ? preferably a removable one such as a CD or DVD ? or maybe even on a flash memory drive.

When the computer?s hard disk is getting full, the computer starts to have a hard time finding space to store things ? including temporary files that it uses during its normal operation. So, we need to clean out all the rubbish. Delete unused files and folders (taking care not to delete system files and folders) to free up some of that wasted space.

Using browsers on the Internet leaves a huge number of temporary files on your hard disk. You can remove them by opening My Computer, right-clicking the C: drive and clicking the Disk Cleanup button.

2 Repair Disk Errors
From time to time, the computer?s filing system gets a bit confused and data is not saved properly. Files get cross-linked or truncated making them unreadable. They are still taking up disk space though, so you need to repair the disk to recover the documents.
Click the Start button, and select Run. In the prompt that opens, enter
Chkdsk c: /f
This will run the disk checking utility that sorts out cross-linked files etc.
It might say that you can?t run chkdsk but you can schedule it to run at the next bootup. Choose the option to run Chkdsk at startup and then reboot your PC. Chkdsk will automatically run, detect and repair any errors it finds.

3 Defragment your disk
Your disk doesn?t really get fragmented, but your files do. It means that the file is split up into small pieces, each stored in different places on your hard disk. When you want to load that file into a program, it has to go and gather up all the pieces and fix them all back together again. This takes a lot longer than if the file was already in one piece.

Fragmentation happens when you create files, add to them and re-save them or move them, delete them, install programs, load photos etc.

As disk space is used and released, the available spaces on the disk become small and scattered over different parts of the disk. As a result, if you have a large file, the filing system can?t find a large enough space to store it, so it has to split it into smaller pieces and save the fragments in the available spaces.
This takes more time to save the file, and more time to re-load it as all the pieces have to be gathered up and put back together.

Some people will tell you that with modern disks, this is not such a problem because they are so much faster. This is true to some extent, but in practice, it really does seem to make a difference. It is certainly true on slightly older PCs.

Luckily, we have a tool called a defragmenter.
1. Open My Computer.
2. Right-click the local disk volume that you want to defragment, and then click Properties.
3. On the Tools tab, click Defragment Now.
4. Click Defragment.

If your disk is severely fragmented, this might take a long time to complete. It?s best to leave the PC to get on with it than try and do something at the same time. Once done, try to remember to do it about once a month ? it will take a lot less time if done regularly.

4 Remove Software You Don?t Use Any More
When you click Start and then All Programs, is the list you are presented with getting bigger and bigger? The chances are that there are programs in there that you haven?t used for months. Maybe you even forgot they were there.

These unused programs are occupying disk space (see Tip 1). But some programs can use more than disk space; they can use system memory and processor time as well. When you install the software for a printer, for example, it very often includes a program that runs in the background, monitoring the printer status etc. You might see evidence of this as an icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen, unless you hide the unused icons.

Open your control panel, select Add or Remove Programs and wait for the list of programs to appear. Then go down the list and remove anything that you no longer use.

5 Remove Spyware and Viruses
If you?re a regular Internet user, receive spam email or have installed unknown, free programs from a web site, you could have one or more viruses or spyware programs installed. Not only is this a security risk, it could damage files on your computer. In addition, the spyware is eating into your processor time which will slow your computer down.

Install and run spyware removers and antivirus software. There are a number of free ones available, such as AdAware and AVG.

6 Clean the Registry

The Registry is a set of system files where Windows and programs that you install save data and settings about themselves. Some programs are not very good at cleaning up after themselves when you uninstall them, so data gets left behind, and links get lost.

Windows itself is just as guilty of leaving the Registry in a mess and provides no tools to clean it up. However, Microsoft have created RegClean a free tool you can download from their website. It does a very basic job though, and doesn?t fix all problems.

Several 3rd-party Registry cleaners do exist, but you generally have to pay for them.

7 Delete Unused Network Connections

If you connect to a network, whether it?s in an office or at home, if you have set up a network connection, Windows will spend time trying to establish that connection when it starts up. If it can?t make the connection after a specified time, it gives up (called a time-out) and tries the next one. If computers to which you connect are frequently switched off, Windows will not make the connection, so you?ll have to wait until the connection attempt ?times out?.

Delete network connections you don?t ever use so that you don?t waste time trying to connect.

8 Remove Fonts that you Never Use

Many people, when they first get a PC, discover fonts that they can download from the Internet, or see discs of 1000 fonts in their local PC store, and catch font-fever. In no time at all, they have a huge selection of fonts on their PC, most of which are never used.

Some software installs additional fonts without you even knowing it, too. Each of those fonts uses up a little disk space and some system memory. The more fonts you have, the more resources are used up and your system takes a hit in performance.

Go to your Control Panel, open up Fonts and delete the ones you never use.

9 Keep Drivers Up-To-Date

Drivers are small programs that let Windows access a certain piece of hardware, such as the video card, sound card, or a printer. New hardware often comes with drivers that were hurriedly put together, almost as an after-thought. In some cases, they rely on generic Windows drivers for them to work. These are seldom optimised for a particular piece of hardware.

After the product has gone on sale, the developers have more time to improve the drivers and eliminate errors in them. Very often, these updated drivers improve the speed of the device, or use fewer resources, so it is worthwhile checking with the manufacturer to see if they have updated drivers. You will often find them by going to the manufacturer?s website and looking for the Downloads or Support links.

10 Reinstall Windows
This is a very extreme way of getting your PC to work the way it did before, and I?d only recommend it if your PC is performing very badly, crashes often, or often runs a disk check when you start it up.
Whatever you do, backup your important data, photos, files etc., before you start.
Bear in mind that if you do a full, clean installation, you will also have to re-install any programs that you had installed before.

You will need your original Windows installation disk or rescue disk that came with your PC. If you don?t know what you?re doing, seek further advice, or leave your system as it is.

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This is a free and incredibly powerful tool in your marketing solutions arsenal, which should be included in all business plans. This method is highly recommended for those who would like to invest in starting a small business online.

Setting up a blog is completely free and offers you much more control and maneuverability than a free website can offer.

You hear success stories everyday about people who have soared from rags to riches. You wish that you could discover a way to ensure success for businesses you own as easily as it is described in these Cinderella stories.

Marketing through blogging is truly the best business advice you could ever receive. This is a method from which you will be able to get one of the best needed business resources, i.e. your opt-in lists. What you have to do is choose a topic that relates closely to your business and set up a blog for it. You can use multiple blogs for one business allotting one for each aspect you want to promote.

Among the marketing solutions you need for businesses online, blogging is a newly discovered tool. There are many advantages of using a blog for your entrepreneurial ventures;

• Blogs have their own very powerful identity on the web and are ranked in a similar way as websites, without the need for intricate web designs, programming and software knowledge, or expensive web hosting services.
• You are free to be as creative as you want on your blog giving a better scope for you to connect with a greater number of people than any other method available.
• Blogging by itself can be termed as a small business, as it has the capacity to generate wealth by selling ads (Google AdSense), promoting affiliate programs and as a direct platform for selling goods or service you have to offer.

It is easy to see why blogs are touted as such powerful and complete marketing solutions tools for businesses online. They are easy to set up, free of cost, easily indexed and ranked, which means high visibility, as well as being the preferred source of information by a good number on internet surfers.

You can use a blog to advertise, market and sell at the same time or separately without worrying in the least about the design, and other parameters upon which websites are dependent.