Most off the shelf PC's use cheap low speed RAM & badly sized partitions. They also usually preinstall loads of bloatware before you get it.

Yeah, I think this tends to be the main problem with new machines these days.

All the extra "utilities" and "tools", not to mention the trial version symantec or norton that is often included.

I get irritated enough when a graphics driver wants to include it's own monitoring application, never-mind all that gunk.

Bloat and memory-resident startup apps are the biggest scourge of Windows - the likes of Apple, Adobe, HP etc all install programs that launch at startup that sit in your system tray - even if all it does is checks for an update once a week, it still slows things down.

I gotta say, my custom builds both have basic, they run happily enough.. fast enough etc etc.

(plus never complain about windows when using IE, urgh)

Personally like this vers. Though http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/457250 will, im afraid, win.

(just found a SB0090 in an old PC, w00t)

I have a laptop (Athlon mobile something or other) and 4GB of RAM, a Core i7 rig with 3GB of RAM and my previous main system which suffered a mobo fault and has a new mobo with C2D and 2GB PC6400 RAM all running Vista and none of them are particularly snappy at startup.

TBH, although I don't switch if off often and normally boot into XP, my (new mobo) C2D system seems to be pretty quick but the C2D system as it stood was over three minutes from switch on to actually usable.

thank god for ccleaner! clicky

tools> startup > didable all the sh1t and gunk that comes preloaded, and any other crap that you dont need (looking at you quicktime )

The home machine is a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo P with the original build from late 2007, plus service packs. Haven't done much in the way of maintenance on it, apart from installing updates, but I don't tend to install reams and reams of demo software.

Same for the work machine, it is a Toshiba Tecra.