Tag Archives: Sandro Villinger

AVG

Give Your Android Device More Space, Speed & Battery Life

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Ready to use our new AVG Cleaner for Android™ 3.0 and its new one-tap ANALYZE view or Smart Photo Cleaner? We’ll guide you through the most important steps of a typical clean-up to make sure you’re not missing anything.

Step 1: Download & launch the new app! Got it? Tap the Analyze button.

Step 2: Clean up photos! Wait for the results. In this example, it found 4 photos that were classified as bad or potentially unwanted:

Tap on Review and Clean, and then use either thumbs down/thumbs up or swipe left or right to delete a photo or keep it. AVG Cleaner for Android will now start learning which photos you like or don’t like to give you more personalized suggestions. But no worries, it will never automatically delete anything – the choice is always yours! Next, go to the Bad Photos and Similar Photos sections to clean up the ones you no longer need. Here, you can mark photos you no longer want:

Got them all? Tap on Delete X Photos! You’ll then find yourself in the Analysis Results area again.

Step 3 – Clean cache: Every time you use your apps, they create what’s called “cache” files. For example, Facebook temporarily stores data from your timeline once you open it to access it quicker next time you open the app. However, many apps tend to forget to delete this data which can accumulate to quite an amount wasted storage. Just tap on Clean Cache and be done with it!

Step 4 – Clean history: Your browser leaves behind traces, such as cookies, temporary browsing data and long-forgotten downloads.

Step 5 – Stop Battery Hogs: The next slice shows you which features of your phone draw the most battery life from your phone – and allows you to turn it off!

Tap to turn anything off you might not need, especially if you’re on the go and without a power outlet in sight.

Step 6 – Stop Memory Hogs: If any currently running app is consuming more than 1% of your memory, they will show up here. You can then go ahead and Force Stop them or Uninstall if you don’t need these anymore.

Step 7 – Get rid of Battery-draining apps: Is your phone not making it to the end of the day without recharging? It may not be your phone itself, but some renegade app(s) that run(s) all the time in the background or does things they’re not supposed to. This section helps you find out which ones are the top drainers – and allows you to stop or delete them!

Step 8 – Free up space: Still struggling to store photos, music or apps on your phone? Then have a look at the last section, Free up space, to see which apps consume the most storage – and get rid of the ones you no longer want!

How much space were you able to free up? How many photos were cleaned up thanks to our new Smart Photo Cleaner? And how many performance-draining apps have you put an end to? Let us know in the comments section below.

If you’re looking for a quick clean-up of all of your unwanted photos, check out our newly re-launched Cleaner today for free!

AVG

AVG’s Q3 App Report Out: Latest Top 10 Draining Apps Identified

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In the eight years of smartphone evolution since the original iPhone, we’ve seen 4k displays, 8 core processors, and 4G mobile speeds that give many broadband connections a run for their money.

What hasn’t changed much, is that your phone battery is mostly drained by the end of the day, your data limit gets capped before the end of the month, and your 16 GB of storage fills up after only months of using a new phone.

But it’s not always the device at fault, with apps being largely to blame for the constant use of intense graphics, out-of-control notifications, and never-ending background checks that drain the battery.

This is where our latest AVG App Performance & Trends Report comes in – Gathered from over a million anonymous devices worldwide, our statistics show which apps consume the most battery life, storage and data volume. We also provide a good idea about which apps are trending.

 

What are the top app sinners this month?

  • Ashley Madison
    A sinner in the truest sense of the word, Ashley Madison app usage is back up to almost where it started – despite being the victim of a massive hack which saw millions of its cheating users leaked and potential lives destroyed.Ashley Madison usage
  • Running Out of Space? Facebook & Kindle Could be the Reason
    When your phone is running low on storage, the first thing you usually do is delete photos and music, right? Not so fast! It’s also the data within apps that can amount to Gigabytes of hidden storage. According to our telemetry, Facebook, Kindle and the Japanese NTT Docomo Email Client rank among the top storage-eating apps that store more files for offline use than you might think.
  • Look Who’s Talking Now: KakaoTalk & WhatsApp On the Rise
    Facebook, Instagram and Google Play (the store app) are still in the top 10 resource-drainers, but now they’re joined by WhatsApp and KakaoTalk.
  • Tamagotchi-esque Apps Making a Big Comeback, Draining Your Battery
    Supercell, now coming in strong and only behind the literal King of the mobile gaming market, is now securing another spot in the top 10 most resource-hungry apps, with its Clash of Clans.Talking Tom

Download the entire App Report here.

 

What can you do to keep your apps under control?

First of all, an app that appears on the top of our lists for storage, data or battery drain doesn’t mean they’re ruining the performance of your phone. It is important to weigh the pros and cons of running a good mix of apps that give you the desired results you want.

Do the self-check: To see what’s consuming all of your smartphone’s battery life, storage or mobile data, we’ve developed App Manager, which is a feature within AVG Cleaner for Android. It quietly observes your phone’s performance and gives you an overview of:

  • The largest apps on your phone
  • Apps you haven’t used in a long time
  • Top mobile data-consuming apps
  • Top battery-draining apps

AVG

Windows 10 November 2015 Update – What You Need To Know

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Microsoft recently rolled out its first big update for Windows 10, or as they call it “November Update/ Version 1511”. While it’s not a massive change, it brings along a couple of new features to the table. This article shows you how to get it, what’s new, and how to solve the top issue that users encountered with this new Windows 10 build.

 

What You Need To Know

 

It’s coming to Xbox, too
If you’ve got an Xbox One, you’ll be getting the entire backend of Windows 10 including all its performance enhancements along with a major UI redesign and backwards compatibility with over 100 Xbox 360 games.


New color schemes
You can now apply the color of your taskbar to all elements (windows, action center etc.) of Windows to make it look not just white, here’s an example:


Edge browser with previews
Microsoft’s much cleaner and leaner “Edge” browser now sports a tab preview if you hover your mouse-over it:

Edge browser with preview

You can also stream any video from within edge to a DLNA or Miracast enabled device, such as an Xbox.


Cortana improvements
Microsoft Cortana, which is similar to Google Now and Apple’s Siri, now tracks movie or event registrations and reminds you two hours before the event starts. It can also track Uber rides to tell you when your driver will be arriving. You can now also use the “Ask Cortana” feature within PDF documents and ask it for specific words and find more about a certain topic.


Find my device
Afraid of your laptop getting stolen? Then you can use the new Windows 10 Update to frequently store the location of your device so you can track it – just in case. You’ll find the new “Find My Device” feature in your settings window under “Update & Devices”.

Windows 10 find my device feature

 

Five Tips To Get You Started

 

Not getting the update? Try this.
If the 1511 November update is not appearing for you, make sure you’ve not upgraded to Windows 10 in the past 31 days, otherwise Microsoft wants to prevent you from losing the ability to revert back to Windows 7 or 8, just in case. But once that month has passed, you’ll be able to upgrade.

Also, you should make sure that you’ve not delayed updates to Windows or that this setting hasn’t been set accidentally: Go to your settings app (click on Start and then on Settings), go to Updates & Security, go to Windows Update and Advanced options. Make sure that Defer upgrades isn’t checked. Go back and click the Check for updates button.

 

Want to clean install? Here’s how.
If you’ve upgraded from 7 to 8 to 10 to this November release and feel your PC has just too much crud left, we recommend trying out AVG PC TuneUp to clean up upgrade leftovers and junk.

In some cases a clean install may be the only solution to get your PC back up to speed. Microsoft originally announced that you could download the DVD files (ISO) from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench and create a bootable USB using the Media Creation tool, however, they have since made some changes, as reported here by ZDNet, that you should be aware of.


Got a flickering start menu? Try this.
A lot of people seem to have issues opening up the start menu or getting random flickering. To solve this problem, do this:

  1. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open task manager. Next, click on File and Run New task.
  2. Check the Create this task with administrative privileges
  3. Type in Powershell and hit OK. Then type the following command (better to copy and paste it):

    $manifest = (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.WindowsStore).InstallLocation + ‘AppxManifest.xml’; Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $manifest

  4. Hit Enter, close the window and reboot. This should solve the flickering.


Check the advertising settings
Microsoft now uses the Start menu to show ads for new apps. If you want to turn this off, open up your settings app (Start and then Settings) and go to Personalization. Click on Start and then uncheck the Occasionally show suggestions to Start entry to turn this off.


Sync your Edge settings
Ready to move away from Internet Explorer and over to Edge? The only thing that held me back was the browser synchronization, which is now built-in as of this new update. Open up Edge by clicking on the Edge icon (not to be confused with the purposely similar looking IE icon):

To sync settings and import your IE browser favorites, click on the three dots in the top right and click on Settings. Scroll down and click on Sync to enable it. Go to Favorites and click on Import.

From now on, all your settings will be synced across your laptops, desktops PCs and even Windows Phones if you have one.

Extra tip: In our testing, the new update doesn’t break any AVG products, so you can keep on protecting and tuning your PC.

 

AVG

Curb Your ‘App’-etite: These Top 10 Apps Stifle Your Phone’s Performance

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We all know that excited feeling when you take your new Android phone out of the box for the first time. The possibilities seem infinite – the battery will last forever, your phone will operate at lightning speed and you’ve never had more space for all your photos and music. But, how long until that hopeful feeling fades? Well, just wait until you’ve installed all your favorite apps. You may see your smartphone or tablet slow down to a virtual crawl in no time at all.

Keen to prevent this? In our global AVG Android App Report (Q2 2015), we’ve again, identified the top 10 apps that drain your battery, clog your storage and use up most of your mobile data. 
AVG App Reprort Infographic Q2 2015

What are the top app sinners? 

  • Snapchat! Oh Snap! Forget Facebook, Spotify, or any of the preinstalled apps: In Q2 2015, Snapchat dethroned them all as the app which had the highest, overall performance drain. Did you know that while it runs, it makes use of the camera, Wi-Fi/mobile data and GPS functionality, simultaneously? This explains the high battery life and traffic consumption.
  • Samsung Updates! The top, hidden battery-drainer this quarter was a service innocuously named “com.sec.android.fwupgrade,” which is responsible for delivering periodic Samsung updates to your device via Wi-Fi. As with the similarly update-heavy Samsung Security Policy Update (KNOX) and Google Play apps, the service has a massive impact on the battery life of your device.
  • Your Browser’s a True Hoarder! Joining more obvious entrants on the top ten list this quarter, such as Spotify and Amazon Kindle, Google Chrome emerged as the second highest, storage-consuming app, thanks to its collection of your browsing data over time. Our advice here: Clean up your browser from the settings menu or use a thorough cleaner product.
  • Facebook ’mis’-manages: A consistent ‘top’ performer in our charts, Facebook entered a new contender this quarter, with its monitoring app, Facebook Pages Manager. The app stores a lot of local content as it tracks page statistics, followers and comments while on the move
  • A bad forecast: Both The Weather Channel and Words with Friends were surprise entrants in our start-up chart – with the apps seemingly having no clear need to run invisibly in the background
  • A drain on your wallet and smartphone: With two of its shopping apps in our top ten ‘run by user’ list, if you want to save data and battery life on the go, you might want to steer clear of Amazon.

These were just some of the highlights that stood out to us. Our top 10 resource-draining apps should give you even more insight into what apps make your phone or tablet slow to a crawl. We’ve divided our top list into apps that you run by yourself, and those that run quietly in the background, which you may not even know about:

App report q2

 

Read the entire App Report here.

So what can you do about it?

Now that you know about the top apps, what’s left for you to do? Stay tuned for our next blog on the top tips to optimize your smartphone and tablet.

AVG

Gamers can have a big impact on cybersecurity

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Video games are very big business. The industry was calculated at $22.41 billion in the U.S. alone, by the researchers at NPD Group in 2014.

The insatiable appetite for games and resulting economic impact of gamers has been credited with driving major tech industry advancements, from better graphics that require ever-higher processor speed to driving down costs of pricey tech innovations making it more accessible in all markets.

Perhaps now is time for gamers and game developers to play a role in helping to shape cybersecurity.

New research shows concerns about cybersecurity among gamers and that the majority of gamers lack confidence in game developers’ ability to ensure their security. According to a new study by PlayFab, the back-end services provider for games, 83% of gamers believe that game developers should be responsible for securing a player’s personal data – though fewer than 40% said they currently feel confident with the safeguards.

When asked about the security of their game accounts and experiences, more than 80% ranked either personally identifiable or financial related information as the most important thing to protect. The concern is not surprising, considering high profile data security breaches that have taken place across the industry, including the huge hack of the Sony PlayStation Network, when hackers stole identity information for up to 77 million players.

“These survey results underscore both the opportunity for game developers to improve trust by focusing on security measures, and the importance that they do so to safeguard an audience that relies on them,” noted James Gwertzman, co-founder and CEO of PlayFab.

Meanwhile, gamers are also being enlisted to help the cybersecurity industry fight cybercrime – by doing what they do best.

In the UK, gamers are being recruited to fill the cybersecurity skills gap as part of the Cybersecurity Challenge UK, a government and industry-backed program designed to promote cybersecurity as a profession.

As part of the effort, the UK government has launched a new 3D video game platform, a browser-based massively multiplayer online game (MMO), where members of the general public of all ages and abilities are invited to participate and crack codes in cybersecurity games.

Stephanie Daman, the CEO of the Cybersecurity Challenge UK recently told the tech website Motherboard, “…a lot of people who are very good at cybersecurity are also gamers.” She identified a convergence of traits that make gamers good security professionals, “It’s that urge to find out how something works, to pursue a trail, to get to the end, to see what’s there.”

If we can transfer gamers concerns around cybersecurity and apply their skills to protect our data, everyone wins.

Game on.

AVG

AVG Performance PRO package is out!

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Do you think that slow-downs, crashes, and poor battery life only affect ageing Windows XP (or Vista) PCs or last-generation smartphones? Think again. Even the latest operating systems, such as Windows 10 and Android 6 (Marshmallow) still haven’t found a cure for performance, bottlenecks, storage hogs, and battery drainers.

Whether you’re running an older PC, smartphone or the sleekest, latest hardware, it’s crucial to keep it running at top performance from day one.

AVG Performance comes bundled with 3 products to help keep all of your Windows computers, tablets, Mac computers, and Android phones/tablets clean and fast. The AVG Zen platform is built into each product, so you can optimize all your devices from one place.

An overview of what’s new:

  • AVG PC TuneUp (Version 16.2): comes with a completely new interface, better cleaning and Windows 10 support. It’s available as a standalone application if you just want the PC version
  • AVG Cleaner for Android: has a new App Manager and a fresh design. Available on the Google Play store
  • AVG Cleaner for Mac (Version 14): has a fresh design and new iPhoto & video cache cleaning. Available from the Mac OS X store.

AVG’s products and suites will now be auto-updated on a continual basis, so if you purchase AVG Performance you will no longer need to worry about keeping your products up to date.

Let’s get to into the detail of what’s new:

 

NEW AVG PC TuneUp (version 16.2)

AVG PC TuneUp

Remember how quickly your PC ran when you first got it? The latest version of AVG PC TuneUp helps you keep your computer at peak performance even more so than before:

  • NEW Tuning Dashboard: Gives you faster access to all tuning features so you can easily see performance potential.
  • ENHANCED PC cleaning: Now cleans up hidden and leftover files from even more Steam games, your Download folder and other applications like VMware.
  • NEW Support for Windows 10

So you may ask: PC tuning? Why would I need that on my new machine? Well, whether you’ve got a 2008-era desktop PC or a shiny new ultrabook, AVG PC TuneUp can do something for you. In our internal tests, we looked at how we could improve performance on both new and old machines, here are some of the results*:

PC TuneUp results

 

AVG Cleaner for Android 

AVG Cleaner for Android

AVG Cleaner for Android helps you clean up your Android phone or tablet more easily, and can help keep tabs on performance-draining apps better than ever before, thanks to:

NEW App Manager: The new ‘App Manager’ feature gives you an immediate overview of renegade apps from a single screen and helps you get rid of them:

  • Running Apps: Shows running apps and how much RAM they’re consuming.
  • Unused Apps: Identifies apps that the you haven’t used in a long time.
  • Data Usage, Battery Usage and Storage: Helps you spot the largest apps and the ones with the most battery and mobile traffic drain.

Curious to try it out for yourself? Download it from the Google Play store for free – if you like what you see – upgrade to the PRO version and benefit from improved battery life enhancements, too.

 

AVG Cleaner for Mac (version 14)

AVG Cleaner for Mac

AVG Cleaner for Mac scans for hidden data trash and unwanted duplicate files that gather on Mac computers through everyday use, helping to free up disk space for more of your precious photos, music, and other files.

We’ve added lots of new features for all you Mac fans out there:

  • FRESH Design: The new Cleaner for Mac app sports a new user interface.
  • NEW iPhoto Cache & video cache: iPhoto creates its own “cache” folders which help speed up the viewing of photos, but also take up more space over time. With help from user feedback we’ve now implemented a means to remove iPhoto caches effectively for deleted photos.

You can try our Performance package as a 30-day trial from www.avg.com/performance.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll show you how these products work in greater detail including some step-by-step guides. Stay tuned.

 * The results from our internal test lab are indicative only. Your results may vary.

AVG

Windows 10 vs. 150 Programs vs. AVG PC TuneUp!

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To understand the effect of 3rd party programs, such as iTunes or Adobe Creative Suite, on your typical home computer, we installed 150 of the most popular programs of 2015 from sources such as Download.com, Softpedia, Top 10-20 lists etc.) on two devices, the HP Spectre x360 (Core i5 2.5 GHz) and the Asus UX-501 (Core i7 3.6 GHz), and measured performance on both without the optimization of AVG PC TuneUp and after, with it enabled.

Experiment complete: This is how our desktop and taskbar looked after the installation of 150+ popular programs. It was beyond slow! Can AVG PC TuneUp help with this mess?

150 apps

Once we installed AVG PC TuneUp, we literally went through every single tool that helps improve performance, such as AVG Program Deactivator, Turbo Mode, Startup Manager, Registry Defrag or Startup Optimizer

The results….

 

1. PC Startup Time: Windows

For “boot time” tests, we used Microsoft’s “Windows® Performance Toolkit”: It’s used by software and hardware makers to test the impact of battery life and performance of their products on typical machines and I consider it one of the most accurate testing tools out there.

Under the load of more than 150 applications, even the more powerful Asus UX-501 suffered as countless startup items, services, drivers and scheduled tasks were loaded which made the machine barely usable in the first couple of minutes.

It’s worth noting that the Windows desktop, the taskbar and all icons were visible within one minute on all devices, but weren’t usable: That’s why we measured total boot time until the very last program was loaded and the PCs or laptops were actually usable.

After we optimized the PC using all the various performance tools included in the 2016 release of AVG PC TuneUp, boot up time dropped between 32-77%.

 


 

However, this theoretical number doesn’t reflect how the machine actually “feels”: In the case of the Asus UX-501, the Windows Assessment Console also showed the actual time to desktop. In all cases, the web, games or office applications were instantly usable after the boot.

 

2. Internet Explorer Startup Time

Again, to measure how long it takes to achieve a simple task such as loading a program, I used Windows Assessment Toolkit. I wanted to see how much of an impact the load of 150 programs has on load time of a simple browser:

 

Internet Explorer 10 launched within 1,37 seconds on both devices, mostly due to their fast Solid State Disks. However, even on these faster devices these times went down to 0,45 and 1,2 seconds after the optimization with AVG PC TuneUp.

 

3. Performance while playing GTA V

Let’s see how much of an impact 150 programs and the optimization using AVG PC TuneUp has on the more fun tasks, such as gaming. In this example I used one of the top hits of 2015, Grand Theft Auto V, which includes a built-in benchmarking tool.

Unfortunately, having installed the 150 programs on the Asus UX-501, the benchmark frequently crashed so I could only look at the performance on the HP Spectre x360. it achieved only 24,4 fps under the load, but once I optimized the laptop using AVG PC TuneUp, frame-rates crawled to over 30 fps in some scenarios and averaged at around 29,9 which is considered smooth gameplay.

 

4. Performance while gaming

The de-factor standard for measuring gaming performance, Futuremark 3DMark, is my next test to measure how games in general perform on a specific device.

Once I got rid of all the extra load on these PCs, I saw quite some improvements in the final 3DMark score:

 

the HP Spectre managed to achieve 118 more points, whereas the much faster UX-501 (with its 960M) got 279 additional points back once all the optimization using AVG PC TuneUp was complete. Some gamers buy new hardware or overclock their devices just for this kind of improvement.

 

5. Writing, Web Browsing and Video Chat Performance

The next test involved the benchmarking tool PCMark 8 which uses real-life scenarios such as browsing the web, Office 2013, Adobe Creative Suite and other tools to recreate a typical home and business scenario.

It measures the exact time it takes to complete tasks down to the millisecond:

 

*Results in Seconds

 

**Results in points

Note: The numbers you see in the graphs for the Asus UX-501 represent the time it took to complete the browsing benchmarks. That’s because the 150 programs interrupted some additional benchmarks (which we didn’t take into account) and thus PCMark couldn’t spit out a final score. The differences were ultimately the same, though. On the HP Spectre x360, however, the benchmarks ran through just fine and showed an increase of 8%. Nice!

 

6. Office 2013 Performance

The next test involved PCMark running automated actions in Word, PowerPoint and Excel to measure performance, such as converting and calculating a huge Excel file:

 

An almost 50% increase while performing complex animations in PowerPoint, calculations in Excel or documents in word is a noticeable improvement. It also goes to show that the impact of 150+ popular applications can, in some cases, have quite an impact on speed.

 

7. Adobe Creative Suite Performance

Many professionals can’t live without Adobes Creative Suite which includes tools like PhotoShop, InDesign or Illustrator. Given that you’re working with a lot of heavy files, your PC needs to focus all of its resources on the task:

Again, my trusty benchmarking tool PCMark helps out here: it automatically performs complex tasks such as applying a filter to a huge PhotoShop file or putting together an InDesign document and measures the time it took to complete the tasks.

In the end, I again got a score for the performance under the load of 150 programs – and once I optimized it using AVG PC TuneUp:

Not a huge improvement, but definitely a nice boost for anyone working with Adobe Creative Suite.

 

8. Battery Life while watching a movie

When you’re on a long flight or train ride, you really need your battery to keep up with you while you’re binge-watching TV shows or movies. Unfortunately, the additional background load and Windows 10’s default power management settings had quite some effect on one of my devices:

Under load, the HP Spectre gave in after 4 ½ hours. Once I tuned the device to its maximum, freed it from all the resource hogs and activated Economy Mode and Flight Mode, battery life went up to almost 10 hours. That’s crazy. Even on the Asus UX-501 I managed to get an additional 20 minutes.

 

9. Disk Cleaning Tests

Performance and battery life isn’t all when measuring the performance of a computer: over time, Windows, applications and browsers accumulate Gigabytes of data. Case in point: even on the newly purchased mobile workstation (Asus UX-501), the installation of 150+ programs and the upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10 accumulated to roughly 38,5 Gigabytes of unnecessary files

The HP Spectre had only about 2.7 GB, but that accumulated over the time of only a few days following a clean install of Windows 10.

Verdict

Windows 10 is arguably Microsoft’s best operating system. It has improved in some scenarios when compared to Windows 8.1 and is a highly stable and smooth-running OS. However, it still suffered under the the load of 150 programs.

Once we fired all of AVG PC TuneUp’s performance guns at it, performance improved.

One of the key benefits of AVG PC TuneUp is that it helps alleviate performance load by using a feature called Program Deactivator which temporarily turns off programs that you don’t use, and enables them on the fly again when you need them, leaving you with a usable system!

Have you tried AVG PC TuneUp for Windows 10? Click here to give it a try.

AVG

Performance Shootout: Windows 8.1 versus Windows 10

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One of the first things you see when reserving your free copy of Windows 10 is that it’s “designed for speed”, promising you faster boot times, resume times and more. But is Windows 10 really that much faster than its direct predecessor? We’ve put it to the test and show you how the new OS fares in multiple scenarios such as boot time, performance while working, smoothness of gaming or battery life.

The Device Tested

In our lab, we started our tests with a rather high-end multimedia notebook – the Asus UX-501.

Asus UX-501

It’s equipped with a Core i7 (which clocks up to 3.6 GHz), 16 GB of RAM, a rather powerful GeForce 960M GTX and a blazing-fast 128 GB SSD. It’s one of the hotter devices of 2015 and should definitely show if and how much Windows 10 was able to speed things up compared to the pre-installed Windows 8.1.

How we tested

To get reproduceable and comparable results of Windows 8.1 versus Windows 10, we clean-installed both versions and installed only the latest drivers as well as our speed testing software, such as PCMark 8. Then we prepared both installs with the following steps:

  • Put the devices in a controlled room with 23° celcius and 250 (+/- 50) lux
  • Set the power plan to “Balanced”
  • Run all scheduled tasks and automated tasks using the “Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks” command
  • Installed all updates
  • Left all Windows optimization features enabled
  • Repeated all benchmark tests three times and then averaged the results

So let’s have a look at the tests we performed before and after the upgrade to Windows 10 Build 10240 (final, including the latest updates as of July 27th):


1. PC Startup Time: Windows 

For “boot time” tests, we used Microsoft’s “Windows® Performance Toolkit”: These tools are used by software and hardware makers to test the impact of battery life and performance of their products on typical machines.


The difference isn’t huge, but it shows that Microsoft is working hard to shave off seven milliseconds of boot time: 9 versus 8,3 seconds isn’t something you feel on such a powerful device, but on a slower PC or laptop this could translate into a far higher benefit.

Winner: Windows 10

 

2. Internet Explorer Startup Time

During a typical work day, applications get launched and closed all the time. Long loading times aren’t just an annoyance to the user, they could even hinder his ability to work or browse the web properly. This is why we used Windows Assessment Toolkit to measure how long it takes to launch an application, in this example Internet Explorer, down to the millisecond.

Yet again, a reduction from 0,9 to 0,45 seconds is something only few people would notice – yet it’s more evidence how Microsoft continually improved performance in every aspect and handles application launch just a tad better than before.

Winner: Windows 10

 

3. Writing, Web Browsing and Video Chat Performance

The next test involved the benchmarking tool PCMark 8 which uses real-life scenarios such as browsing the web, Office 2013, Adobe Creative Suite and other tools to recreate a typical home and business scenario. It measures the exact time it takes to complete tasks down to the millisecond:

The numbers you see in the graphs represent the time it took to complete the browsing benchmarks. Unfortunately, in this instance, the results really weren’t that different. A 0,11s difference is completely within margin of error and doesn’t have any real-life effect.

Winner: Tie

 

4. Word, Powerpoint and Excel Performance

The next test involved PCMark running automated actions in Word, PowerPoint and Excel to measure performance, such as converting and calculating a huge Excel file:

We were impressed: In all test iterations, Windows 10 was able to run 8% faster when working with the Office suite.

Winner: Windows 10

 

5. Grand Theft Auto V performance

Thanks to the ubiquity of services like Steam and the increased sales of capable PCs or laptops, gaming applications are not just some of the most popular applications pn PCs, but also the most resource-intensive too. This is why we used the top game of 2015 Grand Theft Auto V and its built-in benchmark tool which measures the average FPS (Frames per seconds) for different scenes and scenarios of the game:

Windows 10 performed slightly slower, but also well within testing tolerance. However, one of the main benefits of Windows 10 is the exclusive implementation of Microsofts graphics platform DirectX 12 which is supposed to speed up games by to 50% – unfortunately, we’re still waiting for such titles so there’s no way to really put this to test.

Winner: Tie

 

6. Adobe Creative Suite Performance

While the last couple of tests focused more on consumer activities, such as browsing the web or working with Office, particularly IT professionals have a need for snappy performance. One such example is Adobe’s Creative Suite:

Again, Windows 10 showed better results: Likely due to the improved resource utilization and improved driver support.

Winner: Windows 10

 

7. Battery Life while Working

Microsoft promised better power management in Windows 10 and that it would save more battery life when on the go. We tested this using PCMark 8s work tests (in loop) until the battery ran dry. The result:

In all three test iterations, Windows 10 managed to run 9 minutes longer. Not a massive improvement, but definitely enjoyable.

Winner: Windows 10

 

8. Battery Life while gaming

Gaming is the number 1 battery drainer so it doesn’t come as a surprise that our tests were done rather quickly. Unfortunately, even with NVIDIAs latest drivers (as of July 28th), battery life on the 960M while playing GTA V went down rather than up:

A reduction of 13% in all of our tests. We’re hoping that NVIDIA and Microsoft are working closely on a new driver to fix this issue.

Winner: Windows 8.1

 

9. Battery Life while watching a movie

It came as a surprise that our movie tests showed some significant improvements for Windows 10. When watching a 1080p video clip in a loop using Windows Media Player under Windows 8.1, the laptop died after 2 hours and 25 minutes. However, when going to Windows 10 it lasted a whopping 3 Hours. Likely that Windows 10 does something in the background to reduce resource usage and just focus the power on the things necessary for movie playback:

Winner: Windows 10


Verdict

Windows 10 – even in its first release – a tad faster than Windows 8.1. But beware, it doesn’t do magic: some areas only improved marginally, whereas other areas (battery life) really jumped up noticeably.

However, we just tested a clean install of Windows 8.1 versus a clean Windows 10. The areas in which operating systems really suffer from performance is the gradual slowdown that occurs over time and with more and more programs or drivers installed. That’s why, in our next blog, we installed 150+ programs on new Windows 10 devices to see how much the new OS is resistant to this load – and what we, as AVG, can do about it! Stay tuned.

AVG

5 Reasons Why Windows 10 Needs a Proper Tune Up

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While Windows 10 is full of brand new features to help you get the best possible experience, I wanted to take a look under the hood and see if it was vulnerable to the same performance hogs as its predecessor Windows 8.1. I am of course talking about system slow down thanks to program load. YES, as crazy as it sounds, but just by installing programs on your desktop PC or laptop and simply using them you’re slowing it down a bit.

It is not noticeable at first, but the more programs you install, the more this slowdown creeps up on you. But why is that the case? And what can our own tool, AVG PC TuneUp, do about this? This blog has the answers.

 

Reduce The Daily Slowdown

PC TuneUp

More installed programs equal more processes and services going on in the background. Don’t believe us?
Using a professional analysis tool called Windows Assessment Toolkit, we measured the average resource consumption while working with Microsoft Office both under the load of 150 applications (see benchmarks below for more details) and once the device was optimized with AVG PC TuneUp:

Before (without AVG PC TuneUp)

Before

 

After (with AVG PC TuneUp)

After

 

The increased activity doesn’t just have an impact on performance, but on the total lifespan and power consumption, as well. Tools like AVG Program Deactivator, Startup Manager, Uninstall Manager or Turbo Mode help you decrease this activity and make your PC run smooth again.

 

To Solve Hard Disk Thrashing & Fragmentation

Background applications and 3rd party software can be responsible for a lot of unnecessary hard disk activity, even though you’re not actively using the programs. Of course, this also affects the total lifespan of all hardware components.

Then there’s the fragmentation phenomenon which occurs daily: Creating, copying, moving and deleting files causes hard disk data to be scattered all over the place which, in turn, reduces overall performance. AVG Drive Defrag restores perfect order to your hard drive while speeding up file access, boot times, and program launches.

Defrag

 

 

To Free Up Disk Space

Windows® and your programs constantly save log files, “Most Recently Used“ lists and temporary data on your hard disk – but “forget” to delete them. Over time, that leads to critical disk space issues and problems with you applications. AVG Disk Cleaner removes all of these types of files.

Clean Up

 

To Increase Battery Life & Reduce Power Consumption

Even Windows 10 doesn’t really turn off unnecessary hardware of your laptop when when you’re on the road or adjust to what you’re doing sufficiently. Our AVG PC TuneUp Economy Mode and Flight Mode result not just in increased battery life, but also reduced power consumption: Work longer and save on your power bills, thanks to an array of power-saving techniques such as smart CPU power control, power saving modes for your devices and the deactivation of power-hungry Windows features.

PC TuneUp

 

To Improve Stability

Windows 10 has its weak spots, just like Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8. One of them is the registry and the way it’s built: Through daily usage of a PC or laptop, the registry could become cluttered with registry errors such as pointers to non-existent startup items, file types, programs, settings or hardware components no longer in use. This could result in some of the following problems:

  • Invalid startup entries: These leftover entries may cause startup errors.
  • Incorrect file type references: Causing files to be opened by the wrong program.
  • Incorrect uninstaller entries: Such entries lead to errors when installing or uninstalling applications.
  • Missing fonts: Causes fonts to not show up in programs.
  • Invalid ActiveX and COM component pointers: may lead to error messages when running applications.

1 Click

 

AVG PC TuneUp’s Automatic Maintenance feature and Registry Cleaner fix such issues on a regular basis.

AVG

Three Quick Tips to boost Windows 10 Performance

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Windows 10 also brought several new features and settings that can negatively impact performance. It is possible to tweak these features though and mitigate the system slowdown that they cause.

I explored the depths of Windows 10 and have come up with these three quick fixes to help you get your machine get the most out of the new operating system.

 

Turn off Notifications to conserve Power

W10 Action Center

 

Just like iOS or Android, Windows 10 now sports a notification center which gives you a good overview of new emails, updates, plugged in devices and more. Unfortunately, this area quickly becomes too crowded and can contribute to performance and battery drain as Windows 10 frequently checks all apps for new notifications.

My advice: Limit notifications! The fewer notifications you enable, the less impact it will have on your performance (and battery life on tablets and laptops). To disable them, click on the Start button and click on Settings. Go to System and Notifications and settings.

W10 Notifications

 

To turn off all notifications, flip the switch on Show app notifications. However, we recommend going through the list and make sure that your favorite applications like AVG PC TuneUp or AVG AntiVirus still keep you posted and updates on threats cleaned.

 

Turn off Windows Tips

You may have noticed that Windows 10 sometimes shows you tips and tricks for various features, such as how to get apps from the store. The app behind this is called „Show me tips“ which, for some reason, may cause high processor and RAM usage – you’ll notice that if your PC or laptop keeps spinning its fan and is very slow.

While I’m sure that Microsoft is working on a fix for this long-term, here’s how to prevent it from happening right now:

Open up the notification settings as described above and switch off Show me tips about Windows:

W10 Tips

 

This has helped a lot of people so far (see this Reddit thread for more).

 

Turn off dynamic color adaptation

The new Windows user interface tries to automatically adjust the color of the window frame and taskbar to the desktop wallpaper. However, there’s a bug which could increase CPU usage quite drastically and reduce your overall performance when this is enabled.

If you feel your PC is running slow, try the following: go to the Start menu and click on Settings. Next, head over to Personalization. Then go to Colors and switch off Automatically pick an accent color from my background.

W10 Accent Color

 

Done? Let us know if these three tips helped you improve your performance.