No one likes an unresponsive website, but how slow is too slow? A second? Ten seconds? You might find it surprising that waiting even 500 milliseconds can convince a user to take their browser elsewhere. If you want to know just how important it is to have a snappy site, best to take advice from the largest players on the internet.

Adding a solid-state drive (SSD) to your computer is simply the best upgrade at your disposal, capable of speeding up your computer in ways you hadn't thought possible. But as with any new technology, there's plenty to learn. Here's everything you should know about your SSD, whether you're interested in upgrading or just like to know the ins and outs of your hardware.

Delivering apps via browsers avoids the hassle of trying to make them work on different platforms. But is that advantage sacrificed if they are 'optimised' for a particular browser?

Hello Lifehacker, I've always wanted an iMac so the other day I went and ordered one at my local Good Guys store, I picked it up this morning (1TB, 2.7GHz, 8GB RAM, 21.5" screen). I've read about set-up and optimising for first time best use, and just wanted to get your opinion on how I can tweak it to get the best performance? Thanks, iMac Daddy

As fast as your technology may have been on day one, it's probably not quite so speedy now. That doesn't mean you can't restore it to its former glory. Whether its your desktop, laptop, or mobile device, here are 10 great ways to speed up your slow technology.

We all know solid-state drives take a bit of care, so if you want to keep track of how your SSD is faring health-wise, free utility SSDLife will let you know.

You may have lots of software installed on your PC, but you don't need it running all the time. If you want to save some system resources or just create a distraction-free environment in one click, a simple batch file can help.

Windows only: If you find it troubling to stop running applications, clear out RAM, update drivers and otherwise get your system ready for a gaming session, free app Game Booster will do it all for you, according to your preferences.

Windows 7: One of the best ways to take full advantage of your solid state drive (SSD) is to use the performance-maintaining TRIM command. Technology blog GHacks shows us how to make sure TRIM is enabled in Windows 7.

Windows only: We've shown you how to take full advantage of your solid-state drive before, but with Intel's free Toolbox app, you can run and schedule automatic tasks that increase your drive's performance even more.

If your computer's running slowly, and you've tried everything else, it might be time for a fresh install of your operating system. Here are some tips, tricks and best practices to get through the process quickly and easily.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have grown popular in recent years for the impressive speed increases your system gains using them. To get the most from your SSD, however, you can (and should) do a few things differently.

Chrome: Everyone talks about the speed of Google Chrome, but how can you be sure you're really running light and nimble when task manager divides up Chrome's memory usage into individual processes? Use this simple trick to compare browsers.

Windows: Normally $US40, Glary Utilities Pro - a system utilities suite - is available for free, today only.

You're probably aware that 64-bit and 32-bit versions of your operating system exist, but apart from ascribing to a bigger-is-better philosophy, you may have no idea what separates the two. The question: Should you use a 64-bit version of Windows, and if so, why?

As a tech writer, I regularly cringe at all the bad tweaking advice out there, and disabling the system pagefile is often a source of contention among geeks. Let's examine some of the pagefile myths and debunk them once and for all.

Windows only: Even on a snappy system, Photoshop has a bit of a hang time during startup as hundreds of plugins load. Photoshop SpeedUp helps you optimise your Photoshop install and startup.

Windows only: Radical Image Optimization Tool makes it easy to see how compression affects the image quality of the pictures you're optimising with a handy side-by-side interface.

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you're stuck on a slow connection or frequently find yourself using hot spots with different speeds, OperaTurbo can make your web browsing experience more pleasant. Thanks to server-side optimisation, pages load lightning fast. Unlike Opera Mini, which actually tweaks the layout and code of a page to make your mobile browsing experience better, Opera Turbo leaves the page layout exactly how it is but applies varying degrees of compression. Visual elements from the page like images are compressed as they pass through the server to decrease the load time on your end. The pair of images shows the header from the Opera Turbo splash page with the turbo enabled and under normal conditions. While the artefacts in the image are quite visible, images with more varied textures and backgrounds don't suffer as much.