1. Clean out your startup items

清理你的开机启动项目

How long do you have to wait after hitting your PC's power button before you can actually get to work? Thirty seconds? A minute? Two minutes? More?

在按下开机的按钮后，你要等多久才能真正开始工作？30秒？1分钟？2分钟？难道更多？

If you find yourself routinely twiddling your thumbs while your PC or Mac painstakingly boots itself up, maybe it's because your system is trying to fire up a slew of programs at the same time (and indeed, some programs will set themselves to launch at startup by default). Here's how to ease the frantic rush of competing startup programs:

如果你发现在等待电脑艰难的发动时，你都习惯玩着你的手指了，这也许得归因于你的系统正在尝试同时发动一堆程序（一些程序会默认设置它们为开机启动，这是一定的）。下面就是如何轻松的和这些开机启动程序斗争的方法：

For Windows: Click the Start menu, then select Programs (or All Programs in Windows 7), open the Startup folder, and then—as Becky suggest—delete mercilessly. (Don't worry; you're not deleting the programs themselves.) Note: if you see a program sitting in the Startup folder and you don't know what it's for, search on the Web to see what it does before hitting the "delete" button.

Windows系统的做法：点击“开始”菜单，选择“程序”（或Windows 7中的“所有程序”），打开“启动”项目，接着——像贝奇建议的那样——毫不留情的删掉它们。（不要担心；你不会真正从系统中删除这些程序的。）小贴士：如果你看到“启动”项目栏里面有一些程序你不清楚是干啥用的，在你删掉它之前上网搜搜它的功能。

For Mac: Open System Preferences under the Apple menu, click the Accounts icon, and then click the Login Items tab. You may find a variety of arcane programs and helper apps lurking inside (such as the mysterious iTunesHelper), but again—search before you zap an unknown program. (Disabling the iTunesHelper app, for example, will prevent iTunes from opening automatically when you connect an iPhone or iPod.)

苹果电脑（MAC系统）的做法：打开“苹果”菜单下的“系统偏好”选项，点击“账户”图标，接着单击“登录项目”标签。这下你可能会找到好些埋伏在这里的神秘项目和帮助应用（例如“神秘的”iTunes帮助），但是同样的——删除之前上网搜搜那些你不知道功能的程序。（比如说，禁用iTunes帮助应用，将阻止iTunes在你连接iPhone或iPod时自动启动。）

2. Check for running apps in the Windows task bar

检查任务栏上正在运行的程序

Got a Windows-based PC? See that little row of tiny icons in the bottom-right corner of the screen? Over the course of weeks, months, or years, the number of icons sitting in the Windows task bar has probably grown larger and larger—and many of those icons represent programs that are running in the background and consuming your PC's limited resources.

你的电脑使用Windows系统？看到电脑右下角那排小小的图标了吗？在日复一日，年复一年的运行中，Window任务栏上的数量很可能越来越多——而其实大多数图标代表着正在后台运行的程序，它们都在占用着电脑有限的资源。

Expand the task bar by clicking the little arrow on the side, then right-click each icon in succession. If you find, for example, that programs like Skype and iTunes are whirring away even when you're not using them, right-click and select "Close"—or, better yet, open the program and uncheck any "launch at startup" settings in the Preferences or Options menu.

点击任务栏最左边的那个小箭头以展开它，然后用鼠标右键一个个的点击这些图标。如果你发现，比如说，当你没有在用的时候，“Skype”或 “iTunes”图标仍然存在，右键点击它们，然后选择“关闭”选项——或者，最好是在关闭之前，打开这个程序，在设置中找到“开机启动”选项，并取消勾选。