I originally began this post by creating a listing of utilities and techniques to help you clean, optimize and protect your computer to improve it’s efficiency and security. After researching, I found so many outstanding articles that were just too good not to mention. I hope you enjoy this central source for all these great utilities and techniques.

Utilities

5 Top Tools to Clean & Speed Up Your PC (eazycheezy.net)

A Computer Repair Utility Kit You Can Run From a Thumb Drive (readwriteweb.com)

36 Free Security Tools; Anti-Spyware, Privacy, Antivirus, Firewalls & More (eazycheezy.net)

Top 5 Malware Tools (lifehacker.com)

Top 3 Free AntiVirus Programs (eazycheezy.net)

Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools (LifeHacker.com)

Techniques

Top 10 Ways to Clean Up Your PC (LifeHacker.com)

99 Ways to Make Your Computer Blazingly Fast (helpdeskgeek.com)

Maintaining Mac OS X (thexlab.com)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance (macattorney.com)

11 Ways to Optimize Your Mac’s Performance (lowendmac.com)

52 Ways to Speed Up OS X (imafish.co.uk)

Put Your PC Maintenance Routine on Autopilot (microsoft.com)

Optimize Your Computer For Peak Performance (microsoft.com)

21 Essential Steps to Make Your PC  Better/Faster/Stronger (maximumpc.com)

Cleaning Your Laptop Cooling System (instructables.com)

Hack Attack: Using Windows Scheduled Tasks (lifehacker.com)

The list of links above contain some of the best articles I’ve seen and personally used. Did I miss any great articles? If so, please do share. I like to take as many resources for a given subject, such as this article, and provide a central source to reference.