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Q: When closing or switching a program, it slowly disappears like a curtain lowering and then my icons will start reappearing on my desktop and it looks normal.  Seems everything is moving in slow motion on here these days.  I have a three year old Dell Inspiron I600, Intel processor 1.60GHz, 504 MB of Ram.  Hard disk size is 70.7GB with 51.9GB free.  I am also wondering, do these laptops come with unnecessary items installed that just waste space? 

– Debbie
Destin, FL

Q:  I use a 7 year old Dell Dimensions 8200 Series computer.  I have a problem concerning an extremely slow operating system, more noticeable on internet usage.  I have run the Windows Defragment program about a dozen times in the past month and it seems that it has done as much as it is capable of doing.  I have also removed cookies, etc. but to no avail.  Is there any help you can offer or better defragmenting programs I can get?  We use this computer for our banking, internet research and entertainment. I would greatly appreciate any help you could offer.

– Ron B.
Navarre, FL

A: I’ve put these two questions together not because you’re both running aging Dell machines, but because I believe the answer to both problems are the same: not enough RAM.

Debbie, your somewhat aging laptop has a processor that’s quite slow by today’s standards, but what really sticks out in your system configuration is that you only have half a gigabyte of RAM.

Ron, while occasional defragmenting is an important hard disk maintenance task, you’re concentrating way too much on it in looking for a performance boost.  You didn’t mention how much RAM you have, or what operating system your computer uses, but a machine that old almost certainly has 256 megabytes of RAM or less, and probably a relatively small, slow hard drive.

The reason that memory is so critical to system performance is that each program you run (including Windows itself) uses memory.  When physical RAM is used up, Windows doesn’t just refuse to run more programs.  Instead, it creates “virtual” memory using your system’s hard disk.  RAM chip access speeds are orders of magnitude faster then hard disk speeds, so when Windows needs to go to the hard drive to get something that it should be getting from RAM, the whole system slows down.  Upgrading the memory will eliminate, or at least reduce this lag, resulting in a noticeable increase in system performance.

With regard to your other question Debbie, almost all computer manufacturers install supplemental software.  Whether they are “unnecessary” is a matter of opinion.  Typical stuff you’ll find pre-loaded includes trial versions of software such as Microsoft Office, offers for Internet service from national providers such as AOL, and game or productivity packs which may or may not expire after a time.  All of these take up a varying amount of space, but all can be relatively easily uninstalled to recover the space, if desired.