upgrades for a faster computer do it yourself?

There are several things you can do to increase the "speed" of your computer.

1) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.

2) Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type "msconfig" at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need "Adobe Reader Speed Launch"? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.

3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend using AVG Free Anti-virus, Spybot - Search and Destroy spyware remover and Ad-aware spyware remover. These programs are all free.

4) Clean up the registry. CCleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.

Any program you download can only make your computer as fast as it was when you first bought it. Ideally, you need to keep at least 20% of your hard drive empty. Keep NO FILES on your desktop at all; only keep your shortcuts there. Any file saved to your desktop runs out of your RAM memory, hogging resources that help your programs run fast. If you really want to see some speed, upgrade your memory, and maybe your video card. This will cost some money, but there are always specials on RAM. You may even only spend about 20 bucks for a huge perfomance increase.

One company that makes rather expensive memory, Crucial, has a tool on their website that can analyze your computer and tell you what you need to make it go faster.

http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

i wouldn't recommend buying from them, but the information is useful and free.

tuneup utilities

the above said it all. I just want to repeat that defragmenting your drive should be the last, after deleting unused files and disk cleanup AND disk checkup. (those are different)

the above said it all. I just want to repeat that defragmenting your drive should be the last, after deleting unused files and disk cleanup AND disk checkup. (those are different)