Tag Archives: Sandro Villinger

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Three reasons to protect your Windows 10 machine with AVG

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If you’re on Windows 7 or 8.1, the free upgrade to Windows 10 is quite compelling as it sports the return of the Start menu, a fresh look and some exciting new features.

Windows 10

 

But with millions of users upgrading, it becomes the next big target for hackers and scammers.  Having robust security software will be no less important on Windows 10 than on previous versions.

AVG helps keep you safe, no matter whether you’ve upgraded your old PC or got a brand new one. Here’s three reasons why AVG can help keep you safer than the Windows 10 built in Windows Defender:

 

Better Protection

In AV Comparatives monthly real-world protection study, Windows Defender provides a 90.9% protection rate which is just not competitive. AVG scored 99% with zero false positives in May of 2015.

AVG Internet Security

 

Better Reviews

PCMag wrote in April 2015: ‘It’s true that Windows 8 and 8.1 come with antivirus protection built in, but you can’t rely on it to protect you against malware attacks.’ – According to the reviews, the detection hasn’t improved noticeably with Windows 10, so specialist solutions are recommended. 

On the other hand, Windows 10 compatible AVG AntiVirus Free 2015 has 4/5 stars on CNET and 8/10 on Top Ten Reviews.

 

More features

While the built-in protection could help you against viruses, there are a wide variety of threats on the Internet.

A good, free antivirus product such as AVG AntiVirus sticks out of the pack by not just offering critical on-demand scans or real-time protection, but also anti-phishing mechanisms, URL scanning and behavior-based detection scans. And with the full-featured AVG Internet Security Suite you will get not just the award-winning antivirus protection, but the following essentials on top:

  • E-Mail Protection: Detects infected or rogue inbound attachments so they can’t damage your PC.
  • Online Shield: Checks files before you download them to ensure they are safe
  • Data Safe: Encrypts and stores your valuable documents
  • More frequent updates: Checks for updates every 2 hours if you want to.
  • Anti-Spam: Stops spammers and scammers getting to you.
  • Shopping Protection with Enhanced Firewall: Blocks hackers attempting to access the private data stored on your PC.

AVG Product Selector

 

All our AVG security products are 100% compatible with Windows 10 and help protect you from all threats going forward.

 

Existing Users: How to Ensure Ongoing Protection

Are you running AVG AntiVirus, AVG Internet Security or AVG Protection? If so, then you should’ve already received the free update to the latest product version which is tested and ready for Windows 10, as detailed here in this blog post.

If you don’t see the latest dashboard (such as the one below), then there’s a slight chance something went wrong and you may have to download the latest versions:

  • AVG Internet Security, AntiVirus, or AntiVirus Free users click here.
  • AVG Protection or Ultimate bundle customers click here.

Done? Perfect. Once you’ve upgraded from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, all you need to do is check your task bar and see whether your AVG product is still active.

AVG Dashboard

 

If for some reason, the protection is inactive or you can’t find the AVG icon, please download and install the latest versions as mentioned above. That’s all it takes! Again, this process should be fully automated and won’t need to manually update.

 

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The Ultimate Witcher 3 Performance Guide

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I’ve never touched a Witcher game before but this one really captured me, not just for it’s great storyline or epic scope but how real the forests and the cities look and feel:

Witcher 3

With graphics like these, you need three things: a fine-tuned PC, a decent graphics card and the right settings. In this guide we’ll look at making the Witcher 3 even more beautiful than it already is and also make sure that it runs super smooth on your machine. Ready?

Can your PC run The Witcher 3?

To run The Witcher 3, you need a fairly powerful PC as CD Project RED (the Witcher’s makers) have stated minimum requirements that are quite hefty:

OS: Windows 7 or 8.1

Processor: Intel Core i5-2500k 3.3 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 940

Memory: 6GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

With this kind of hardware, you’ll be able to play the Witcher 3 at low or medium levels at best. In order to crank up all the details at Full HD, you’re going to need a rig with a far more powerful GPU and more memory:

OS: Windows 7 or 8.1

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHZ

Memory: 16GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 970 GTX

This is what I’m using and the machine just about manages to produce 50-60fps (frames per second). But no matter whether you got the lower specs or a high-end gaming PC, we’ll show you how to get the highest quality and much smoother framerates.

 

#1 – Performance 101: 9 Tweaks to Optimize Your PCs and Laptops Performance

Before you start tweaking performance settings for The Witcher 3, I recommend that you follow the 9 essential steps to boost your PC or laptop speed that I published a while ago. This covers the basic steps to get your machine in top shape, including how to:

  • Upgrade your graphics drivers and even use beta drivers
  • Overclock your graphics card (safely!)
  • Use our AVG PC TuneUp to turn off all performance-sapping background activity
  • Defrag your hard disk
  • …and more!

As The Witcher 3 takes its toll on your hardware, you got to be sure that it’s tweaked to its absolute limit before you jump into the game-specific settings.

 

#2 – Get the NVIDIA & AMD THE WITCHER 3 Drivers

As usual, NVIDIA have prepared a special driver optimized for The Witcher and enables dual GPUs and HairWorks as well as the best possible performance.

 

#3 – Use SweetFX to Make The Game Look Gorgeous

The SweetFX tools have long been the first steps to making games look far more beautiful by adding various filters and graphic effects like sharpening and bloom or different anti-aliasing techniques. The thing is: SweetFX simply enables graphical modification, but there are dozens of great different profiles from users from around the world. The ones I’ve tried and can recommend are the following:

Sweetfx

 

This video should help you get a great understanding of how the various SweetFX settings work.

Video

Witcher Three SweetFX

#3 – Tweak The Graphic Settings

The in-game settings in The Witcher 3 are very straightforward: You’ll find them both under the Options menu and Post-Processing and Graphics. You can chose between presets ranging from Low to Ultra and you should find the ones that really match your computers performance:

Witcher 3 Menu

What I would recommend here is turning off Sharpening or setting it to Low as the Highest setting makes everything look just a bit too crisp and unnatural. The slightly blurry look adds to the immersion and also increases performance. If you’ve got a weaker PC, you should definitely turn off Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion, as these are the big performance eaters here.

Witcher 3 Menu

Moving to the Graphics setting, here are some interesting tweaks that made The Witcher 3 run smoother on my gaming PC: First, I switched from Full Screen to Borderless Window. Curiously, that reduced a significant lag when playing The Witcher 3.

The other bit that helped me was turning off Hardware Cursor. Other than that, it’s the usual deal: if the game stutters, try turning down settings one by one. The ones that don’t make everything look awful and still get you a few more fps are Grass Density, Water Quality, and Shadows.

Start lowering these settings first before you lower settings with a more visible effect such as Detail Level or Texture Quality or otherwise your game won’t look as gorgeous as this:

Witcher 3 Graphics

Other than that, a few words on the other options that could help you squeeze out more performance:

  • Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+ should be enabled as it adds better shading and lighting effects to any scene at not too high of performance cost. If you’re really struggling with low frames per second, you should try the less taxing SSAO technique before turning it off (which really impacts the visuals). This comparison video will help you get a sense of the impact:

Video

Witcher 3: Ambient occlusion

 

  • HairWorks: Hairworks is a NVIDIA specific technique that makes hair on both the protagonist Geralt and monsters look fantastic. If you don’t care about having every single strain of hair perfectly animated, you can save a ton of performance by turning it off.
  • Grass density: Even on my rather powerful gaming PC, turning off grass density had a noticeable effect on smoothness in some scenes.

 

#4 – Boost Your Visuals with These 5 Hidden Tweaks

Got your Witcher 3 maxed out and it’s still super-smooth? Then let’s try a few hidden tweaks that’ll make The Witcher 3 look even more gorgeous than before. However, you need to do a bit of fiddling: First, you need to make sure that your in-game settings are perfectly tweaked (you’ll soon know why).

First, go to your user folder under “C:UsersUSERNAMEDocumentsThe Witcher 3”. Make a copy of the file “user.settings” and open it up with Notepad.

Witcher 3 Notepad

While a lot of these settings are still unexplained, users on the web have figured out the effect of some of these. First, jump to the line GrassDistanceScale and FoliageDistanceScale. This value defines the quality of every piece of nature you see on screen, such as grass, trees or bushes and the distance at which you can still see them.

If you go with the games Ultra setting, this setting will be at 1.5. If you’ve got a powerful rig, try cranking it up to 3 to get a noticeable improvement in The Witcher 3’s beautiful environment.

Witcher 3 Hairworks

Next, we recommend adding a new entry under the [Rendering] section called HairWorksAALevel. This setting determines the level of anti-aliasing on hair on NVIDIA graphic cards. If you set this to 8, hair will render without jaggies or other strange artifacts at the cost of just a few frames per second.

Done with all the settings? Save the file! But here comes the important part: To prevent the game from changing the settings back to its default, you have to make the file ready-only. To do that, right-click on the user.settings file and select Properties. Check Ready-only and hit OK to write-protect it! Hint: In addition to that, AMDs support pages recommend setting the EnableTemporalAA setting from True to False on multi-GPU systems (AND CrossFire: More than one AMD/ATI card in one system).

 

#5 – Make Sure Your NVIDIA & AMD card is set up properly

If The Witcher 3 is stuttering when you’re roaming about in towns, there is a specific setting you have to make within your NVIDIA or AMD cards control panel:

  • NVIDIA: Go to Manage 3D settings and scroll to the Maximum Pre-rendered Frames.

Witcher 3 Pre render

 

  • Set this to 1 to reduce any stuttering.
  • AMD: Under Radeon Pro, create a new profile for The Witcher 3 and set the Flip Queue Size to 1.

We hope you can enjoy The Witcher 3 thanks to our gameplay tweaks and remember, these are only recommendations based on my own tests.

AVG

Are these the world’s greediest apps?

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On a typical business or vacation day, my phone barely makes it through the day: A bit of Googling here, a bit of research there, some email and gaming in between and before I know it, my battery life is down to 10% and it’s only 4pm!

It’s not necessarily my smartphone’s fault, but likely a consequence of the demanding apps that I run, often completely invisibly in the background. These apps drain not just battery life but also fill up my storage or cause a ton of mobile traffic.

Turns out, I’m not alone.

When looking at one million of our anonymous AVG AntiVirus and AVG Cleaner users, we discovered the most resource-hungry apps in the first quarter of 2015. Plus, we found the most-used apps in each category! Curious as to what’s new this quarter?

 

Key findings:

Dating & chatting apps surge into the Top 10

Android owners worldwide were trying to meet Mr or Mrs Right in the first three months of 2015. POF Free Dating entered the Top 10 and there was a new entrant at number six from the chat category, OoVoo Video & Text, which also had a noticeable impact on battery life.

 

Facebook Messenger is now the top communication app:

Facebook Messenger has previously been ranked as the third most popular communication app behind WhatsApp and Google Mail but has since overtaken them and now sits top of the pile.

Facebook Messenger

 

Samsung Knox, Samsung Push, and Beaming Service are the top battery drainers

Samsung’s KNOX security service drains the battery of your Galaxy smartphone invisibly in the background.

Knox

In addition, the built-in Samsung Push Service now also runs in the background and made it to 7th position. This service is required for ChatON, a WhatsApp rival that packaged with almost all of the company’s handsets. The good news for your batter is that Samsung turned it off on February 1st.

The top spot among battery draining apps is a background service called Beaming Service by Mobeam Inc., which also comes bundled with many Samsung phones.

Tip: See our all-new AVG Android Optimization Guide to identify and turn off such resource-hungry apps.

 

Cleaning and security apps that drain your phone

People looking to protect and clean their phone should know some of the top used apps, including Lookout Security & Antivirus and Clean Master, show up in the top spots on our lists of top battery drainers and traffic consuming apps. What’s interesting is that 88% of all measured apps in the traffic consumption category consume less traffic than Clean master, which clocked in at several hundred megabytes of data per user.

Clean Master

 

New gaming style on the rise: casino games start a new trend

In the first three months of 2015, we identified a massive spike in the use of card and casino games as well as big blockbuster arcade games.

While the casino category didn’t even exist previously due to its low usage, in the January to March period of 2015, it featured as up to 7% of usage, and arcade games also grew to 12% usage from 1.6% in the previous quarter. Solitaire and Zynga’s Livepoker stood out as particularly popular.

Conversely, we spent far less time playing casual, strategy, puzzle or family games. See graph below:

Usage Chart

Find a full list and all the data in our app report here.

 

So what are you supposed to do if you’ve got one or even many of our resource drainers installed? Our AVG Android Performance Guide will help you out with great tips to improve battery life and clean up space in no time!

For highlights from the report, check out the infographic below.

Android App Report Q1 2015

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Introducing the new “App Manager” for AVG Cleaner for Android

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Our AVG Android App Performance report paints a clear picture: apps cause some of the most common headaches that Android users experience.

Having lots of apps installed on your device can cause a number of issues including:

  • Slow performance and lack of stability
  • High battery drain leading to short battery life.
  • Hogging storage space leaving no room to save photos and videos
  • Racking up high data costs as apps quietly download and upload data all the time.

There’s good news though: AVG Cleaner for Android, with its enhanced ‘App Manager’, makes it easier than ever to manage the apps on your device.

App Manager is only available in version 2.3.1, which you can get today from the Google Play store.

AVG Cleaner PRO

 

The new ‘App Manager’ feature gives you an immediate overview over their apps and helps you get rid of them once and for all.

App Manager has three display modes to help you identify which apps could be causing problems.

 

Running Apps:

Smartphones can often become slow and sluggish when multiple apps are running in the background. App Manager shows all running apps on a single screen and details how much RAM they consume.

 

Unused Apps:

It can be easy to forget just how many apps we install on our devices and forget about. The unused apps view shows you how many of your apps you’ve not used in a long time so you can reclaim valuable space for the things you love.

Unused apps

 

Data Usage, Battery Usage and Storage:

This view helps you understand which apps are affecting the performance of your device. By consuming data, battery or storage space, removing these apps can help you squeeze more out of your device.

Storage

Data Usage

In this example, it shows that doubleTwist probably downloaded 1.25 GB worth of podcasts onto my device and also consumed the most battery. As I stopped using it a while ago, that was a nice reminder to uninstall the app – and not have it eat up the resources of my Android.

Let us know how you like the new ‘App Manager’ and how many apps you were able to get rid of.

AVG

Get ready for Windows 10 with PC TuneUp Update

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The update will include new functionality for those seeking to clean up, speed up and improve battery life of their Windows PCs and notebooks.

The new update (SU3) will automatically be installed on April 29th or will already be included if you download the AVG PC TuneUp (2015 release) trial from this page after that date. It sports the following enhancements:

 

Cleans up, speeds up and powers up Windows 10

AVG PC TuneUp already supports the upcoming Windows 10 operating system ahead of its planned summer 2015 release: All 39 features to reduce the typical slowdown caused by third party applications, solve bottlenecks, clean up and customize are Windows 10 ready.

Windows 10

Optimizing will be more important than ever before with Windows 10. Many new laptops and tablets come with smaller, but generally slower processors and smaller hard drives. That’s why AVG PC TuneUp helps to ensure all the new Windows 10 devices remain fast and have enough disk space for your programs and data.

 

Enhanced Cleaning for Steam, Downloads and more…

But that’s not all. This month, we’re unveiling a couple of nice new features and functionality for all you PC tweakers out there:

  • Better Steam cleanup: When a game is downloaded via Steam, it downloads files like DirectX, C++ redistributables and other files necessary for the game you launch. But once you launch it, those files remain. In this release, we’re now detecting even more of these wasteful files hidden in all Steam and game folders.
  • Support for the latest Google Chrome version to clean up browser cache files, history lists, auto-complete forms and more from the new Google Chrome builds.
  • Download folders: Our Disk Cleaner also now cleans up the users Downloads folder, which tends to contain a ton of downloaded apps, photos, documents and other things you may not need anymore – and probably totally forgotten about.

 

Various Fixes Throughout the Product

We listened to your feedback: In addition to the new and enhanced features, we also fixed some minor bugs that some of your experienced when using AVG PC TuneUp, such as:

  • Random crashes with 1-Click Maintenance
  • A bug in which an HTML link could not be opened in Outlook

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Troubleshooting GTA V

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On launch day I spent hours trying to get GTA V to run on my gaming machine which was an absolute time-consuming nightmare.

To spare you the trouble, here are some of the steps that led to GTA V finally working on my machine:

 

RockStar Social Club

Download Rockstar Social Club from this page here. This is the application that actually launches GTA V and checks for an online connection and your system requirements. Having the latest version or even uninstalling and reinstalling it could help.

Rock Star Social Club

 

Updating Windows System File

The one tip that solved the problem for me was downloading an updated Windows system file that’s responsible for the controller input (it was either that or unplugging the Game controller, which I obviously didn’t want to do.)

To do that, go to this page and download the file “Xinput1_3.dll” by clicking on “Download ZIP-FILE”. Chose the “18.944.0” file or the “32bit9.18.944.0” (if you have an older 32-bit system). Extract the file. Next, open up the folder C:WindowsSysWow64 and look for a file called “Xinput1_3.dll” and rename it to “Xinput1_3_backup.dll”. Copy the file you just downloaded here.

xinput1_3

Repeat the same step for the “C:WindowsSystem32” folder. Reboot your PC! This has helped a lot of users on the Steam community forums – including me.

 

Validate the Game Cache:

If you’ve preordered GTA V it’s possible that the encryption on launch day didn’t work for you, so it may be best to try to validate all of the 60 GB files in GTA in Steam. To do so, open Steam and right-click on “Grand Theft Auto 5”. Select Properties and go to “Local Files”. From here, click on “Verify Integrity of Game Cache”: 

Validating Game Cache

 

Delete the GTA V game cache:

Upon installation, GTA V creates temporary files and settings that you can simply reset which may help you solve some of the launch problems. Simply hit the “WINDOWS” key on your keyboard and “R” at the same time and type in %appdata%. Click on “AppData” in your navigation bar at the top of the Windows Explorer and go to “Local”. Delete the entire “Rockstar Games” folder.

Game Cache

 

Create a new Administrative user account:

Rockstar admitted that GTA V doesn’t work if your user account name consists of some unusual characters. Basically everything except numbers and regular letters work. Simply renaming your account doesn’t do the trick, so you actually have to create a new administrator account that you need to switch to before starting GTA. Rockstar is working on a fix. You’ll find the appropriate options in your “Control Panel” under “Add of Remove Accounts”.

New admin user

 

Disable any integrated graphics chip:

Some laptops and Desktop-PCs have both an integrated (weaker) graphics chip to save power/battery life and a more powerful discrete graphics. In my example, my desktop PCs mainboard has an Intel HD graphics chipset and a dedicated GeForce GTX 970. In such instances, you should go to Device Manager, Display Adapters and right-click on any graphics chip that’s not NVIDIA or AMD. Select Disable: 

Disable graphics chip

In some instances, it helped some users to disable their main graphics chip before launching GTA V and then re-enabling it right at the very moment the game launches.

Here’s a video that shows you at which point you’d need to disable and enable the chip:

Video

Disabling Internal Graphics Chips

 

Run GTA V as an administrator:

Open up the following folder on Steam “C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonGrand Theft Auto V” or “C:Program Files (x86)Rockstar GamesGrand Theft Auto V”, right click on “PlayGTAV.exe” and select “Run As Administrator”.

 

Now that you are up and running with GTA V, check out my Ultimate Performance Guide to help you make the most out of the experience!

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The Ultimate GTA V Performance Guide

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It’s been a long time coming, but Grand Theft Auto V is now available on Windows PCs. While Playstation and Xbox players have been enjoying this title for some time already, I strongly believe that PC is now the platform to play GTA V.

Why? Well quite simply, the PC has so many great options to tweak that gamers can really control and enhance their gaming experience!

If you have bought GTA V for PC and are wondering how you can improve framerates, graphics and more then you’re in luck. I’ve run a series of benchmarking tests on GTA V and have put together my top tips on getting the most out of this red hot title!

So without further ado, here is The Ultimate GTA V Performance Guide.

 

Download the full guide 

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Three AVG performance tools for your new PCs

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There are a few things you absolutely must do on your new PC, laptop or ultrabook so you can really get the most out your new gear. I have put together some handy tips using AVG tools to ensure that you’re not left disappointed!

Before we start, you should visit parts one and two to make sure that your old machine doesn’t go to waste!

 

Secure and optimize your PC from Day One

No one likes pre-installed bloatware, spyware or viruses. Constant popups or icons in the notification tray can ruin the feel of a new device. I’d advise making our performance and protection bundle the first thing you download to keep your PC clean and virus free.

AVG PC TuneUp

Also have a look at some of the performance tips for new PCs on our blog:

A lot of these tips dive deeper into the performance features of AVG PC TuneUp and show you how they work, step by step.

 

Get rid of unwanted programs and files

These days, PCs come with a lot of preinstalled trial software and advertising. While some of this software can actually be useful, in many cases they can slow down performance and get in the way. My advice is to use AVG PC TuneUp’s Uninstall Manager to get rid of programs you may no longer need.
Within AVG PC TuneUp, simply go to “Optimize” and click the “Uninstall Programs” button. From here you can click on Load to show you the programs that slow you down the most, or you can use “Filter list” to look out for large or rarely used programs and get rid of them in a snap.

AVG Uninstall Manager

If you need some of these programs, you can also “freeze” them so they don’t consume resources: To do that, click on “Deactivate Programs” and flip the switch. This will turn off the background activity (which slows down your system) until you start it!

 

Update your drivers

When it comes to performance, drivers are a hugely important of the puzzle. They control the hardware that’s built-into your machine. They control how your graphics work, how your Wi-Fi transmits data, how your hard disk stores its data or how and when your Bluetooth connects to your phone.

Driver Updater

That’s why you should install AVG Driver Update to make sure that you get the latest drivers all the time!

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Grab the new AVG Cleaner for Mac

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Just as Windows and all applications tend to collect temporary files, log and so called “cache” files in order to function properly, so do applications on your iMac, MacBook or Mac Mini – and in many cases they leave those files behind.

AVG is happy to announce a brand-new version of AVG Cleaner for Mac, which helps remove leftover files from your Mac. Click here to download it right away!

AVG Cleaner for Mac

 

AVG Cleaner for Mac analyzes invisible data trash and unwanted duplicate files that gather on Mac computers through everyday usage, helping to disk space for storing precious photos, music and other important files. The new Cleaner for Mac app sports a new user interface, too, which helps makes the cleaning easier. Here’s what we actually help you remove:

  • NEW iPhoto Cache: iPhoto creates its own “cache” folders, which help speed up the viewing of photos, which takes up more and more space. Also, our users reported to us that they experienced problems with deleting photos which is directly tied to the iPhoto cache, which is why we decided to implement that cleaning mechanism.
  • Forgotten duplicate files: Viewing, copying and editing files could result in duplicate music,photos, videos and documents
  • Uninstall leftovers: Even if an application has been uninstalled, unneeded cache files may remain
  • Download folder: Many old unneeded files including setup files, videos, pictures and documents may end up in the OS X download folder
  • Browser cache: Safari®, Chrome®, and Firefox® browsers store non critical temporary cache files and cookies in a cache folder. Deleting this cache not onl frees up drive space but can hel protect privacy
  • Crash files and logs: Update logs and crash reports are created automatically by both Mac OS and 3rd party applications. This data is not critical and can waste lot of drive space.

AVG Cleaner for Mac Disk Cleaner

AVG Cleaner for Mac Duplicate Finder

 

 

AVG

Five Useful Ways to Repurpose Your Old PC or Laptop

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When you’ve just bought a new computer it can be very easy to neglect your old one. However, even computers more than five year’s old can still be very useful.. Here are some ideas to give you inspiration.

 

Use it as a home theatre PC:

Instead of having a DVD-player, a Blu-ray player or set-top-box connected to your TV, use your old PC as a home theatre PC (HTPC) hooked up to your TV or projector. You can then enjoy all your content with one single remote control. So much easier!
I recently converted an old laptop into a home cinema PC. Even a 5 year old PC or laptop can easily handle things like Netflix streaming and HD video beautifully – all you need is a remote and a DVI/HDMI adapter + cable!

Home Theatre PC


Put it in your kitchen:

Got an old PC lying around that’s capable of running Windows 8 (which is very likely)? If so, get a touchscreen and put it on your kitchen counter. Download an app like Recipe Keeper or Cocktail flow and use interactive recipes for your next culinarian creation:

Recipe Computer

 

Use it as storage:

A “NAS” (Network Allocated Storage) is basically a network drive that you can use to store and access files from everywhere in your home. Simply install a NAS tool like http://www.freenas.org/ on your old PC and hook it up to your router.

NAS Computer

Once that’s done, it’ll act as a fileserver that you can, for example, stream movies to any device in your household – or even access it remotely when you’re on the go! Makes life a lot easier and you can save money, given that dedicated NAS aren’t cheap.
 

Keep on using it and tune it up:

If you didn’t get a new PC or want to give it to someone in your family, you can easily breathe fresh life into your old PC by giving it a proper tune-up.

Use our new version of AVG PC TuneUp and follow our three basic tips right here. Plus, last year, we’ve put together an extensive list of tips to clean up and speed your PC, laptop or ultrabook running Windows:
Ultimate PC Optimization Guide Part One

Ultimate PC Optimization Guide Part Two

Ultimate PC Optimization Guide Part Three

 

Once you’ve run through all of that you’ll be looking at a PC that feels almost like a new one.

PC TuneUp

 

Give it away:

If you can’t sell it online, just give it to charity or a friend who needs it more than you. But don’t forget to wipe it clean using a tool like Active@KillDisk to completely wipe the content of the drive, so nobody will ever recover your data, passwords or worse…