If you aren’t into running a hacked BIOS or overclocking your netbook, you’re a bit limited when it comes to squeezing out a few extra drops of performance. There are, however, some useful little Windows applications which can be pretty helpful. There four have worked well for me on my trusty old MSI Wind and Acer Aspire One.

Got a favorite you’d like to share? Post it in the comments!

mz-cpu-acceleratorMZ CPU Accelerator
This app is a bit like  Process Lasso, but it’s much more limited in functionality.  MZ CPU Accelerator keeps an eye on your currently active application and boost its process priority, and it can also manage core affinities. Obviously the affinities will only help you if you’re running a dual-core Atom nettop or netbook.

This one definitely “feels” like it helps – at least a little bit. And I’m all for any app that helps the Atom run at peak performance.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta
With hardware acceleration support finally added, I don’t care if this is the most unstable beta I’ve ever tested. I’m running it regardless because I’m tired of overworking my CPU when playing Flash games. That is if they’re even running smoothly enough to play. With Flash Player 10.1 and the right drivers, web games are a lot more fun.

gma-booster

GMA Booster
Unless you have an Ion-powered netbook or AMD-based thin and light, you’re probably running Intel integrated graphics of one kind or another. While the author claims performance gains of up to 240% are possible, I’m a bit skeptical. Still, it definitely helps with performance on the GMA 950 and 900 chips.

gamebooster-sdfasfGame Booster
IOBit has done some things this year which have cast a bit of a cloud, but Game Booster is still one of the easiest-to-use tweaking apps I’ve found for Windows. Fire it up, and you can quickly shut off any unneeded services, free up as much memory as possible, and even offer to close other programs which are running.