Here’s how to check which updates have been installed on your Windows 7 computer:

• Click Start, type installed updates, and then press Enter.

As shown above, Windows displays all the Microsoft updates that have been installed (including those for Microsoft Office). To check your service pack level, do this:

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If your computer seems slow and you’ve already upgraded your memory (say, to 2GB or higher), your next step might be to upgrade the hard disk. First, check out your current hard disk’s performance using HD Tune. Write down the average transfer rate and access times so you’ll know how much better your new disk is. If you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can use the Windows Experience Index to get a rough estimate of your disk speed.

Now, figure out what type of disk you want to buy. Write down your choices as you go:

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During installation, you can skip entering the Windows 7 Product Key–just leave the field blank (as shown above).

Windows will run normally for 30 days, but it’ll be nagging you to enter the product key in the whole time. After 30 days, it’ll lock itself down and prevent you from doing most tasks on the computer. No worries, just follow these steps:

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One of the best ways to improve your system performance is to remove any unnecessary startup applications. In Windows Vista, I suggested changing startup programs using Windows Defender. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed that capability in Windows 7.

In Windows 7, follow these steps to remove startup applications with the System Configuration tool:

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That’s a screenshot from my favorite free tool for testing hard disk performance–HD Tune (there’s a pro version you can buy, too). That’s from my Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1.5 TB SATA drive backup drive.

The Blue Line–Transfer Rate

First, the blue line is the transfer rate. That’s the speed which the hard disk sends data to the computer when a big file is lined up nicely–defragmented, in other words. Notice that the line starts high (at 126 MB/sec) and drops (to about 57 MB/sec). That’s because the test moves from the outside of the drive to the inside. Disk drives are round, like a record, and so the outside spins faster (in inches/sec) from the inside.

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Windows 7 let’s you maximize a window by dragging it to the top of the screen, or size a window to half the screen by dragging it to the left or right side of the screen. I hate it–I already know other ways to do it, and sometimes it resizes windows for me when I want to just move them to the edge of the screen.

Disabling it is easy, if you know where to look. Watch the video above, or follow these steps (after the jump):

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Photoshop is a vast and unconquerable software, even to someone like me who uses computers for a living. The best you can hope is to pick it up one tip at a time, becoming more and more efficient. I found these tips very useful, especially the keyboard shortcuts for adjusting brush size and hardness: use the square brackets–[]–to adjust size, and hold down the shift key when pressing the brackets to adjust the hardness.