Interesting to see what actually happens but I am happy with my predictions (and I will be happy to be proven wrong), I understand all the concerns expressed but I don't think they will remain for much longer (at least not for most people). Security and privacy are indeed major concerns but I think they can be solved for the vast majority of users. Cloud data can already be very secure and safe e.g. Amazon S3 (which I use).

Data roaming costs are an issue at the moment but this will change and as always in computing technology will merge (e.g. fairly seamless transitions from wifi to GSM data on the iPhone and others).

As always I am playing games I love looking forward and trying to see where we are going.

just defragged and it took hours.....yawn. Anything recommendations? I'm tempted to try the defrag available from the excellent ccleaner people?

Ive tried the free Puran defragger and scheduled it to start at boot-up every Monday. Seemed to work OK.

Try Googling Auslogics as they have a free defragger which I use and feel is very good.

Defragging is something that I tend to do at weekends when the PC is idle. I would've thought that doing it during the week while other stuff is running would slow it down. Just a thought.

I used to use Smart Defragger which was supposed to work when the machine was idle - but I thought it was hogging resources.

I move to this mainly as it comes from the same people of CCleaner that many of us around here think as Bees Knees!

EDIT. Another reason that I moved from the constant defragger is because I was finding it made my nightly Acronis much slower and larger as it had much more new information to record.

TP

Just read the last few posts - what is wrong with the standard defragger?

To be honest I don't bother with defragging at all. For most people its not necessary.

skinny.

A daft answer I know but - with Vista you don't get one of those nice red and blue segmented charts to show you all the hard work it is doing.

TP

That was Windows '98!!! XP doesn't do that. Window's defrag very slow though, imo. As mentioned, best to do it when PC idle for a few hours. Any basic maintenance you can do will help to speed up the processing speed. The less files / rubbish it has to search the faster it will operate.

My Windows defragger kept saying that there were a load of files that couldn't be defragged. The Auslogics defragger somehow manages to delete them. And it's pretty to look at as TP alludes to with his defragger.

I use XP's standard one - but 'pretty to look at' you say, Hils and TP?

That's at least worth a 'Hmmm?', I think.

I don't do ugly, Doc!

Pretty to look at? The words Drying Paint and Watching spring to mind!

Indeed. I started defrag at 21.00hrs. It was 34% complete at around 03.30 when I made a trip across the landing. Nothing else running and speed of scan on max.
Also as Hilary says some files were not defragged.
Thanks for all the responses - I'll probably try TP's solution first if only cos I like my ccleaner.

I use Comodo, Firewall and Antivirus.Free.
Has very handy set of tools, including defrag.
It's very quick, but then it's only an 80 Gig HD.

If you are going to defrag your disk then make sure you run CCleaner first to remove all the unwanted and temporary files otherwise it will take even longer.

Zachary about the CCleaner!

Clear the rubbish and then defrag and then defrag again. Get rid of those frags.

This post was done so fast on this machine, it was edited before it was posted. :-)

One of the other problems with some of the defrag software is that it doesn't defrag the free space. This means that as files expand or new files get written they get bits and pieces to use. I notice that Piriform Defraggler has a feature to just defrag the free space and on a file by file basis if requested. It seems pretty good. It has made a better job at defragmentation than Smart Defrag, but it took around ten times as long. I am going to try the Auslogics Defrag system next.

After Auslogics Defrag and then the other two repeated again I finally managed 0% fragmentation. Each defragmenter managed different files to a different degree.

Whist we are in disk tidy up mode (must be too quiet for much trading) can I mention the massive disk space I recovered by using the facility to delete all the recovery points but one in Drive Properties.

I have a 250 gig disk on this machine. I let MS update my Vista. I recovered about 30 gig three months ago and another 30 gig had crept back by yesterday.

TP