7 Performance Tips for Tuning your Toshiba Excite Write to ensure optimal drawing performance

When I was a kid, the performance tip was simple: grab a clothespin and latch a (probably now extremely rare and expensive) baseball card to the rear dropout of your bike and let 'er go. For the most part, the tips and techniques contained herein will sort of be like that: somewhat psychological. Just like with your PC or laptop, we never really know what the culprit can be that impacts our system's performance. Likely some kind of I/O device has been added that has a conflict with another, perhaps a driver has been corrupted, maybe some application you installed keeps calling home for no discernible reason at all. Regardless, if you stick to these basics, you should at least stay out of trouble and be able to ensure that if you're drawing, for the most part, it will be the way nature intended.

First off, BEWARE. There are an untold number of apps available that promise to boost the performance of Android devices, do NOT install any of them unless you have it on really, really, really good authority that this app will help and that it won't install some kind of virus or hostage-for-pay disaster. Just remember these words: there is no such thing as a one-click solution. The best results you'll get are when you are careful, diligent, and keep it simple.

Not a good authority.

Secondly, since Toshiba has locked "root" access on the the Excite Write, there are some tips and techniques we cannot use to improve our device's performance, however, seeing as how unless you know what you're doing and getting that deep into the OS may result in it getting messed up, that's probably a good thing.

That's too "deep".

OK, now on to the tips (one last caveat, most of these changes may cause your battery to drain faster, while others will actually increase battery life):

1  Leave the tablet alone.
Seriously, if it's running fine by itself when you buy it, that's because there's nothing installed that's gumming up the works, and if you start installing games, calendar and clock apps, animated backgrounds, etc. etc. after some point something will cause it to slow down and by then it will be too late to figure out which one is the culprit. This post is on tips to improve your tablet for drawing performance, so you know what? Here's the best tip: keep your Toshiba Excite Write clean of any superfluous crapps and keep it dedicated to drawing with. Do the OS upgrades, install the best drawing programs, turn everything else off, and be done with it. Keep it dedicated and leave it alone.

2  Change the system settings.
You might find the below set to something other than performance, if that's the case, change it:

1. Wi-Fi: if you're not using it, turn it OFF. Turn it back on to send your artwork to your agent and collect your big $$$.
2. Bluetooth: turn it OFF unless you are using it for something else, like typing on a keyboard. When you're drawing (none of the drawing apps I know advertise the ability to use the keyboard and pen concurrently, which would be cool), why do you need your bluetooth using up any resources, including your battery?
3. Sounds: might as well leave these on, they're not huge sound files and they can be useful feedback when clicking on tools and controls.
4. Wallpaper: wallpapers take up RAM and (in the case of animated backgrounds) CPU power. Replace the backgrounds with a small solid block of color. I created a graphic specifically for this purpose.

Here's one you can use

5.  Audio enhancement: here's where my advice gets a little dicey... I would turn any of these enhancements off in case any of them use the CPU and don't have specific hardware dedicated to them.
6. Battery: set "System Performance" to "Maximum Performance".
7. Power Management: Turn OFF "Automatic brightness" and "Power Save" under "Brightness". Ensure "System Performance" to "Maximum Performance".
8. Apps: this one will take some time and effort...
1. Click on the "RUNNING" tab and examine what's running. If you see any application you installed that's running some kind of always-running app, and the app in question doesn't have a legitimate need to be running all the time, click on it and then "Stop". ***be careful not to shut off system services that are required to run your tablet!***
2. Under the "DOWNLOADED" or "ALL" tab, examine what you have installed. If you weren't careful, you may find some apps that were installed without your awareness, usually the kind of apps associated with advertising. Click on them and Uninstall them. If you don't use a particular apps any more, Uninstall them, too.
3. Again under the DOWNLOADED" tab, click on each app and check out to make sure:
1. They don't run by default if they're a game, or other non-system app.
2. If the cache or storage is excessive, you may wish to Uninstall the app, but definitely clear the cache for apps you don't run frequently. It will mean that the next time your run it it might take a little longer to start, but it's a good way of clearing up memory. You can clear the entire cache for all applications with just one click: under "Storage", tap on "Cached data" in the list and you'll be prompted to clear all cached data.
3. Turn OFF "Show notifications". Unless it's a system app or an app that you require to notify you for whatever reason, turn this feature off. If you have 100 apps installed on your tablet and every one of them is allowed to notify you of every advertisement, upgrade, or meal the developer is just about to tuck into, your tablet will run very poorly at times.
4. Some apps, such as Google Currents (a magazine-style app) can cause system slowdowns. It's a fun and exciting app to be sure, but disable it (and others like it) when you're not using it.
9. Location access: again, not sure about this one, but it might help to turn off "Acces to my location" when you are drawing. It didn't seem to make any difference to me, but who knows when an app might poll the GPS and cause a slight lag or delay?

3  Keep your apps and your OS up to date.
Self-explanatory - your Excite Write will notify you if there are updates required. Do it, sometimes they come with bug fixes and even new features!

4  Buy a high-speed memory card for the micro-SD slot.
Keep your images off the main storage of the tablet; buy a high-speed memory card for the micro-SD slot.
5  Turn off any Widgets.
Widgets are those little applets that run on the home screen. They include clocks, weather apps, slideshows, news updates, calendars, etc.While pretty cool if you want to put your tablet on a counter and impress anyone walking by, it sucks system resources and you should turn these puppies off.

6  Still having problems? Lag? Advertisements popping up in your notification tray? It's Factory Reset time.
Doing a factory reset will start you off from scratch - just like when you took it out of the box. This means that you will free up storage space and will ensure that only the apps you need will be running. Be aware that this will also erase any of your files and settings!

7  Run only one drawing app at a time.
If you're doing a little "heavy drawing", click the app list button (rightmost icon in the bezel at the bottom of the screen) and turn off any other applications that may be running, and definitely try to keep it to one drawing app at a time. I've run several apps concurrently with no perceivable impact but it's worth making sure that 100% of system resources are allocated to your task at hand!