Remove and Replace Background Image with Solid Color | Faster 7 Part 18

Many people ignore this tip because they feel it is “insignificant” or just plain unacceptable.  Despite it’s lack of popularity, removing the background image from your desktop is an age old technique for freeing up some system memory (RAM) from your computer.  Many people take a photo on their high definition cameras not realizing these images are taken at a massive resolution size.  They copy and paste this image onto their computer and then set it as their desktop background.  What happens is that image is loaded into system memory for display and stays there.

For those who have lower memory systems this is an excellent tip to have.  Right out of the box, Windows 7 backgrounds are optimized for low memory usage, but if you are using a personal image as your background and you have not optimized it, it is probably a good idea to drop it.  For those of you who do not know, an “optimized” image is an image that is typically configured as a “desktop wallpaper”.  So if you downloaded your image from a website you are a fan of and they designated it a “desktop wallpaper”, it is likely the image is already optimized and you do not need to worry about removing it.

Remove and Replace Background Image with Solid Color:

1. Right click on your ‘Desktop’

2. Select ‘Personalize’

3. Select ‘Desktop Background’

4. On the ‘Picture Location’ dropdown, select ‘Solid Colors’

5. Choose a color

6. Select ‘Save Changes’

7. That’s it!

Of course, removing background images completely always gives some form of performance increase.  Even if your background image is optimized, loading a solid color puts less of a burden on the operating system.