Tweak UI

I basically start from the top and work my way down.

1. Under General, I ensure that the silly things like menu and windows animation are disabled. I do not let Windows optimize my hard disk while idle since I use a 3rd party defragger.

2. Under mouse, I change menu speed to the fastest possible. This makes navigating through Windows much faster. The only reason to leave the delay on is if you’re building a computer for someone who’s not adept with a mouse.

I would love to use X-mouse, where the window focus changes without changing the ordering of the window, but there are enough non-standard API Windows apps that automatically force themselves on top when the focus is over one of their child windows that it doesn’t work as well as it does in X. So even if you’re a hardcore X windows user, I still recommend leaving it off. You’ll be less frustrated that way.

3. Under explorer, I enable classic search for explorer.

4. Under Thumbnails, reducing the image quality can reduce HD space. I leave it at the default.

5. Under desktop, I add my computer, my documents, and recycle bin

6. Under command prompt, I enable tabbed filename and directory completion.

7. Finally, I enable auto-logon. TweakUI for Windows actually encrypts your password now.

With all of that complete, I make my final trip to Internet Explorer, move my cache to my temp drive, reduce the size to <100MB and have it check for new versions every time. I disable auto-resizing of images, set my home page to where else but FiringSquad.com... (Actually, it goes to my.yahoo.com but I do have the FS RSS feed.) The hard drive gets defragged and I now have a fast, high-performance system ready to run.

From here, I can move on and make modifications to the specific hardware control panels (i.e. my NVIDIA or ATI control panels or sound card settings). These are specific to each system so I won’t go into that. Likewise, BIOS optimization is often unnecessary (guides are particularly troubling to write because there is too much variation between system components. It’s a shame that many “gaming oriented” motherboard manufacturers don’t hire a tuner to write an optimization guide to include with their manual).

So there you have it, a short course on the personal touches I put in when building my own system. As I mentioned in the intro, this article isn’t designed to be didactic and tell you what’s “right” but should instead be thought of as a discussion between colleagues. Are you one of those people with a different partition strategy, or someone who’s runs a ramdrive for IE cache permanently? Do you have a different approach to PCI card placement? I’m curious to hear what others out there are doing, and you can make your thoughts heard by clicking on the comments link on the frontpage.