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At the end of last year ( about three weeks ago ) I decided that my netbook ( Samsung n230 ) needed to be tweaked for performance reasons... and I did what a normal lazy person would do : I doubled the RAM ( too bad I couldn't install more than 2 gig ) .

The performance boost was evident under Linux ( Ubuntu 11.10 ) but Windows 7 ( Starter Edition ) ... not so much

Today I decided I needed to do something for my netbook pal ... the result was ( pardon me ) fantastic .

Here's what I did

• Removed the following visual effects :

1. Animate controls and elements inside windows
2. Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
3. Enable transparent glass
4. Fade or slide menus into view
5. Fade or slide ToolTips into view
6. Fade out menu items after clicking
7. Show shadows under windows
8. Show thumbnails instead of icons
9. Show translucent selection rectangle
10. Show window contents while dragging
11. Slide open combo boxes

• Disabled ( manual start ) the following services :

1. Block Level Backup Engine Service
2. Bonjour Service (from iTunes)
3. Certificate Propagation
4. Group Policy Client (if not on domain)
5. HomeGroup Listener
6. HomeGroup Provider
7. Offline Files
8. Portable Device Enumerator Service
9. Security Center*
10. Software Protection (make sure you activate Windows first)
11. SSDP Discovery
12. Windows Defender*
13. Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
14. Windows Search

Also, since I do backups on my own, I zeroed the system restore space ( re-enable it only if I have to do some major upgrades like a service pack )

believe me : the 30 minutes I spent tweaking my machine were totally worth it .