you could also have many subprograms running inside windows. How big is the icon toolbar next to the clock in the lower right corne? The more icons and stuff you have in there, the more programs are in memory ( or using memory to do things you don't know of). If you have virus software it slows down your computer a lot. My girlfriend had about 20 items in there and I cleared all but four and there was a huge improvement. Also look into the start meno under the startup and see if programs are automatically starting up. Also try ad-ware and spybot. Those will get rid of some things that might slow down the computer.. and it's just a good habit to do. One more things. I had a 2.4GHz laptop and that sling was garbage compared to my 2GHz athlon 64, so don't go by clock speeds..