Switching the Windows Background to black has two advantages

You may have a family photo or a scenic image as your background on your Windows desktop but did you know that you laptop experience would be vastly improved if you just changed it to pure black?

Windows has to constanly remember the pixels used for you background image, placing a full size image from a digital camera makes it redraw the background image after anything passes over it which slows things down.  The less layers Windows has to cope with the faster it can run and the less precious memory it’ll need.

Having a complex image as your desktop background can slow down your reading as well as your physical computer.  The black text and image icons used for programs and folders can get lost in the image and you can find yourself frantically searching for the icon you want to click on.  The contrast of the icons against the image is to blame for this, white on black or vice versa is the highest contrast you can ever achieve.

Tip: If you are trying to find an icon in a sea of icons then keep pressing the first letter of that icon and Windows will eventually highlight it.  If you wanted to find a folder named “Holiday Snaps” the press ‘H‘ on the keyboard for example.

If you change the background to black and decide it’s not for you then it can be quickly changed back, if you MUST use an image from a digital camera as the background try making it smaller so it fits only 50% of the screen.

Changing the background is simple, start by minimalising all your windows and then right clicking on the desktop:

Right click on the desktop and chose "Properties"

Then chose background image “none”, select black and press “Apply”:

Remove any background image and change it to pure black

That’s it, now notice how smoothly you can use Windows compared to before, you could use a very dark orage or blue if the black seems a bit depressing!  Get more shades on the “other” option in the background properties.

Does your desktop look something like this? You're slowing the whole system down!

It’s easy to get a bit lazy when it comes to sorting your files out on your desktop.  Over a period of times you may have images, shortcuts, folders and web-pages scattered all over the place when you switch your computer on.

Windows Desktop is like a permanently open folder and every icon on the desktop takes up vital computer memory.  This mean that having your desktop cluttered not only makes it hard to spot a specific file it also drags the general speed down of Windows Explorer.

How do you store your files neatly and efficiently?

Simple, make lots of folders!  Make a folder for your images (or use the on in your documents folder), make a folder for your music, another one for your word documents etc. etc. and throw all the files into the right folder.

If you are very lazy then you could just throw all the icons into a folder called “junk” for example!

You may want to leave the icons for your most used programs, the dustbin and your internet browser on the desktop for ease of access.