Letters: Winrot response

In response to Mark Gibbs' Gearhead column "Welcome back Winrot," I find that doing periodic file cleanups often has more of an effect on performance (the computer's, not mine) than defragging.

Windows Disk Cleanup only scratches the surface of all the junk files that build up in a system because the programmers of Windows application software are too damned lazy to clean up after themselves, especially Microsoft's own IE and Office.

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CCleaner to the rescue

In response to Mark Gibbs' Gearhead column "Welcome back Winrot," I find that doing periodic file cleanups often has more of an effect on performance (the computer's, not mine) than defragging.

Windows Disk Cleanup only scratches the surface of all the junk files that build up in a system because the programmers of Windows application software are too damned lazy to clean up after themselves, especially Microsoft's own IE and Office.

CCleaner, the politically correct name for "Crap Cleaner," does a far more thorough job, removing useless files and getting rid of the obsolete entries in the Windows registry.

Then Microsoft's own PageFileDefrag defragments the registry files, but you better get this one before it disappears from the Microsoft Web site, fully assimilated by the MicroBorg. Microsoft bought Mark Russinovich and Sysinternals, the original developers of PageFileDefrag and a host of other useful little Windows tools.

A bloated and fragmented registry can really kill system performance. So can a "temp" folder with hundreds or even thousands of files in it.

I guess I have to add that CCleaner and PageFileDefrag are free downloads, although Microsoft's ownership of PageFileDefrag may make it go away in its present free incarnation. I use both regularly on my own systems here and also on many of my clients' systems. Never a problem.

Last week, I used PageFileDefrag on the system of a new client. The software hive of the registry was chopped up into 29 fragments. System runs a lot more responsively now. Worth far more than the expensive, retail-packaged utilities. Use in good health.

Ben Myers

Harvard, Mass.

Going green

In Mark Gibbs' Backspin column "To be proactive or not to bee" about the "need to create a financial argument that makes capital expenditure rational in terms the corporation can understand," I'll give you that argument below, but first, bear in mind that energy efficiency comes not just from energy-efficient "gear" but also from modifications to central-plant equipment, air-handling systems, building-automation system changes, etc. There are many ways to skin that cat.

Traditionally, conservation projects are sold based on "simple payback." More sophisticated analysis might look at life-cycle costs and NPV [net present value] analysis.

In my [urban teaching] hospital, I supplement these with the following: Let us assume my utility costs increase but I can reduce my operating costs by $100,000 after spending $300,000 on improvements, delivering a simple payback of three years (and three years is pretty typical for conservation work.) Do we do the work?

Well, many companies would dismiss a three-year payback out-of-hand. But consider this: The margin for hospitals tends to run in the 3% to 5% range.

Let's say that I don't do the work. Then my hospital needs $2,500,000 in additional revenues to pay for that energy cost increase (using a 4% average margin for a hospital). Alas, my hospital already runs flat-out, so delivering $2.5M of extra care is quite a trick. And indeed, the resource costs to deliver that care would surely exceed my conservation-project cost anyway.