Via the network security blog I found the article How to Rebuild your Computer and Reinstall Windows Without Headache, and the timing couldn’t have been better, since in the near future I will need to do so (although an XP machine, not Vista). The advices are given are good. Three tools which I like that didn’t get mentioned are:

• XP AntiSpy – a very nice and compact XP tweaking program
• X-Setup – a very complete tweaking program
• The PC decrapifier – useful mainly in the case of computers bought with preinstalled Windows.

However, this isn’t the topic of the rant. It is rather a comment left on the article:

dust sticking on the CPU heat sink?

In what way could this possibly slow down a PC? It might cause it to overheat, and crash… but really it’s never going to slow a machine down.

…

The comment was allegedly left by Pointers-UK employee Steve Button (I say allegedly, because I can’t verify that the Linked-In profile or the commenters assertion is correct). He describes himself as a sysadmin, but doesn’t even know (or put the dots together) that most modern processors have overheating protection, and – as the temperature rises – they reduce the clockspeed to keep avoid damage to the hardware (it just so happens that recently I read a blogpost detailing such a problem, so this isn’t just a theoretical situation). What a sysadmin!