Flowers are blooming and birds are chirping, which means it's time to start your yearly spring cleaning extravaganza. While you're emptying your closets, decluttering, and getting rid of the bloat in your life, why not do the same for your computer? Here are some simple, easy to follow tips to give your trusted Windows PC a little spring cleaning of its own.

Clean Up Your Hardware

We'll start with the outside of your machine, since you probably have all those cleaning products out for your household cleaning anyway (right? right?). Turn it off, unplug everything, and find an open area where you can easily reach everything. Whether you have a laptop or a desktop, your main priority is probably going to be the keyboard and mouse or trackpad. Luckily, you can clean them pretty easily with just a few household objects. If they're looking a little greasy, you can always clean them up with a Mr. Clean magic eraser, too.

You'll also want to get inside your computer's case and clean any dust out of the fans to keep everything running cool and quiet. We've shown you how to do this on a desktop before, and all you need is a little compressed air to do a pretty thorough job. Laptops, unfortunately, usually require a lot more work. You'll have to refer to your computer's instruction manual for more information on how to take it apart.

Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview today, complete with a new tablet interface and some enhancements to the traditional mouse-and-keyboard desktop. Here's what it looks like.

Microsoft's "re-imagining" of Windows 8 is focused very heavily on a new, Metro-style touch-based interface. However, they make a big deal of saying that it's just as usable with a mouse and keyboard—and no matter what device you're on, you can switch between the simple Metro interface and the traditional Windows desktop to fit whatever your needs are at that given moment.

Performance Increases

One of the issues that's been on our minds since they previewed this new interface was whether this will keep bogging Windows down with more running processes, and whether running a full Windows desktop on a low-powered tablet was really a good idea (after all, we've seen Windows run on netbooks).

Microsoft knows your fears, and has addressed them: Windows 8 is slated to have better performance than Windows 7, even with this metro interface running on top of a desktop. We ran a few tests back when the the Developer Preview came out and found that to be the case, especially when it comes to boot times. Tablet users and netbook users especially should notice a fairly significant performance increase with Windows 8. Especially considering that any of your tablet-based apps will suspend themselves when you jump into the traditional desktop, so they don't take up any of your resources.

                 As all iPod owners might know, it isn’t possible to sync your iPod with more than one computer. But what if this computer (with which you sync the iPod) dies? All the content on your iPod is at stake, because syncing it with another computer will erase everything. Ah, poor lonely iPod. Fortunately, there’s a way out. So keep reading to see how you can sync your iPod with a new computer without the risk of losing data.

This is the first part of the guide, more focused on iPods (Shuffle, Nano, Classic). A guide on ‘syncing your iOS device with a new computer’ will be available soon, do check back!

Your scenario can be either:

The computer with which you used to sync your iPod has died, and you can no longer sync it because a new computer won’t accept it.

Or, you simply want to move your entire iTunes library to a new computer and eliminate the risk of losing everything when you sync with it.

In short, you don’t want to lose data, but syncing the iPod with a new computer means all the content on your iPod will be overwritten with the content in that computer’s iTunes library.

However, moving the iTunes library to another computer is not as difficult as it seems, since you have the original (host) computer up and running, so you can get stuff out of it. Apple has detailed instructions for that, so have a look at them. Just a matter of copying and pasting, it’s that simple. But syncing a lonely iPod with a new computer (without losing content already existing on the iPod) is not easy, and there’s no guideline provided by Apple whatsoever. That’s why it is recommended to have a backup of your computer, and doing so might save you a lot of hassle, kinda like what you’re probably going through right now!

                    After years of struggling with your old, sluggish Windows PC, you've finally unwrapped a shiny new computer. Here's how to get started tweaking your settings, installing programs, and beefing up security to keep it running like a dream.

Title image remixed from an original by Air0ne (Shutterstock).

Before you do anything, there are a few things you'll want to set up first:

• Install Microsoft Security Essentials—Let's not sugarcoat it: Because of its popularity, Windows is one of the more vulnerable operating systems, so before you do anything, you'll want to put a few security measures in place. Microsoft Security Essentials is still the best darn antivirus we've used; it's free, and it's just as effective as anything you'd pay for. Head over to Microsoft's site, download the suite, and set it to auto-scan and auto-update so you can stop fussing with it and get on to the fun stuff.
• Offload Your Computer's Bloat—Unless you built your computer yourself, it's likely the manufacturer's stuck some unsightly, unnecessary, bloated crapware on your computer that will do nothing but slow your computer down from the start. To get rid of it, download previously mentioned Revo Uninstaller and uninstall the software that shipped with your machine.
• Change Up Your Theme—Okay, so it's not entirely necessary to do this before anything else, but why stare at that bland Windows wallpaper when you could be watching a slideshow of different Ferraris as you set up the rest of your computer? Microsoft's got some great themes over at its site, and there are quite a few others floating around the net as well. Grab some of our favorite wallpapers from our Wallpaper Wednesday series, and if you want to take it even further, check out our guide to fully customizing your desktop and setting up an attractive, customized desktop HUD with Rainmeter. Once you've got your desktop looking awesome, it's time to get to know Windows 7.