Read and Understand Your Resource Usage

When your computer starts acting a little slow, a lot of people jump to their resource monitor to see what's causing problems. However, just looking at a bunch of charts and graphs isn't going to tell you what's wrong unless you really know what you're looking for. High CPU is a common problem with one app slowing your system down, and as soon as you close it, the issue should go away. High network activity could be the cause of slow internet or slow file transfers over the network. RAM usage, however, is where a lot of people get thrown off: high RAM usage isn't inherently a bad thing. Know the difference between good and bad RAM usage before you start blaming processes. If you want to keep an eye on your resources, check out our favorite system monitors for Windows, Mac, and Linux, too