There are many ways to make your computer go faster—for example, you can drop it from a tenth story window, a temptation we have all had. But it's better to figure out why it is slow, and then do something more reasonable about it.
In this book we'll be picking through the various things that make computers slow, particularly the things that slow down computers running the Microsoft® Windows NT™ operating system. And we'll find out how to fix those problems, because your time, and your computer's or network's time, is precious.
We'll also talk a little about capacity planning, so that the capacity of your computer or network can stay one step ahead of its necessary workload. And we'll cover strategies and tools you can use to make sure the applications you write perform well on Windows NT.
This chapter serves as an overview of Windows NT performance issues, starting with the tools historically available for tuning a system and how Windows NT changes the traditional approach. We'll define performance bottlenecks and how to locate where in your systems they are occurring, and how to anticipate potential bottlenecks so technology managers can accumulate the right equipment for your applications' requirements. We'll take a quick look at what programmers can do with the performance information Windows NT gathers, and finally, we'll glance at the key performance measuring tools included with this book.