I have heard from others that Norton can slow your computer down a lot just because it uses a lot of memory just to do its monitoring. The same for programs like Spybot. At one time Comcast offered us free McAfee virus protection and it slowed my computer down so much I got rid of it. Now all I normally use is the free AVG virus/spyware program. Works great and does not slow down the computer.

My wife has our first laptop that runs slow but it has minimal memory and many other problems. To keep it runnig as fast as possible I have it automatically run disc cleanup everytime the computer starts. One other thing you can do in Windows is to set a schedule to automatically run a disc defrag every week or so. If all else fails don't forget that you can buy a new laptop for $199.