Windows® 98 Unleashed

Chapter 9. Performance Tuning: Optimizing Memory and Disk Access

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Windows 98 and Memory: A Primer

• Performance Tuning: General Considerations

• Optimizing Memory

• Optimizing Disk Access

• Overcoming FIle Fragmentation with Disk Defragmenter

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

—Aldous Huxley

In Chapter 1, “Preparing for the Windows 98 Installation,” I spent some time musing about why our workaday computer chores seem to take just as long as they ever did, despite the fact that our hardware is, generally speaking, bigger, better, and faster than ever. The answer to this apparent riddle is related to Parkinson's Law of Data: Data expands to fill the space available for storage. On a more general level, Parkinson's ...