Lets face it, Vista is a major resource hog.  It's expected actually, with all of the cool visual styles, effects, and features that are loaded in it.  But all piled up, it can really slow your system to a crawl.  So how do we speed Vista up a little bit?

The number one killer for a machine running Vista is the amount of ram (computer memory) the machine has.  What used to be a fair amount of ram has become a bare minimum in Vista.  Vista can take a decent machine with 512 megabytes of ram and just stomp it to death.

Upgrade your ram

First off, if you're into Vista for the long haul, and want to use all of the fancy styles and features, I would consider upgrading the amount of ram your machine has.  1 gigabyte should be enough to keep all of the "cool" stuff enabled, but more is always ok.

Don't know how much ram you have?  Click the Start button, right click on Computer and go to properties.  This shows you basic configuration of your computer, like your CPU speed, how much ram you have, and your operating system, etc. 

Now that you know how much you have, you can see how much you need.  Ram is pretty cheap, and most sites have a type of memory lookup page, so you can lookup the type of ram you need based off of the model of computer you have. TigerDirect for example has a system that allows you to put in the make and model of your computer, and it will give you the available ram for your computer.

For Dell computers, you should be able to lookup parts by your Service Tag (usually labeled on the back of a desktop, or the bottom of a laptop).

If anything, you can install a little utility called Bellarc Advisor , which will inventory your computer, and should have a section that shows what type of ram you have. That information is very important when ordering ram, because you can only install that kind of ram into your computer, or you'll end up with all sorts of problems.  If anything, call a local computer guy to help you out, and make sure you ask them how much they'll charge you for the process.

Disable some of the fancy Vista effects

Ok, so you have atleast 512 megabytes of ram, and you dont want to (or can't) upgrade your ram at the moment, you'll probably want to disable some of the fancy vista features.

You'll want to start with Aero, which is a major resource hog.  You can start by just disabling the transparency, which will help quite a bit if you don't want to turn off Aero entirely.  Right click on your desktop somwhere and click Personalize, and select Window Color and Appearance, and uncheck the Enable Transparency checkbox.

To disable Aero entirely, click the Open classic appearance properties for more color options selection at the bottom of this page, and select Windows Vista Basic, which will keep a pretty nice looking theme for you, but get rid of all of the other Aero stuff.

Second, you can disable some of the flashy sliding of menus and such.  Click on the Start button, and right click on Computer, and select properties.  On this page, click on the Advanced system settings selection on the top left corner. Under performance, click the Settings button. This will take you to the Visual Effects tab in Performance Settings.

If you want to disable all of the visual effects, you can simply click the Adjust for best performance selection at the top.  There are a couple of these that I like to use though, like Smooth edges of screen fonts, and Show thumbnails instead of icons. 

Take note that if you disable the Use visual styles on windows & buttons option, it will disable the theme that you have selected.  You can disable whatever you want, I usually disable all of the fading and sliding, since there's no real visual benefit to most of them.  Just remember, the more you keep, the more resources it uses.

Disable unnecessary applications running in the taskbar

Some applications love to have those pesky applications that startup with your computer, that supposedly help speed up the use of these applications, but all in all, they just clump up and slow down the overall performance of your computer.

You can stop them every time the computer boots, or you can use the program i've used for many years and still use today called AutoRuns. I like it for the simple fact that it's free, and you don't have to install anything, you just run a simple executable.

AutoRuns was originally developed by a company called SysInternals, but they were absorbed by Microsoft a while back. Don't worry though, their applications still have all of their luster.

AutoRuns searches the entire computer for all processes, services, and applications that startup with the operating system.  It also helps you figure out what the application is by labeling which company the application was made by, allowing you to easily see what you need to keep running, and what you might want to disable.

AutoRuns has a lot of information, so don't go around unchecking everything, as that might have dire consequences, the main tab you'll want to pay attention to is the Logon tab, which shows all of the apps that run on startup.  From here you can disable silly startup apps like Quicktime, ITunes, Adobe, as none of these are necessary to use the products. 

If there is anything in here that you're unsure about, just do a google search for the name, and you should be able to find out if it's necessary, or just fluff.

Use Readyboost and a usb flash drive

Ok, it's not the greatest performance tweak in the world, but anything helps.  This basically turns your flash drive into a spare pagefile for Vista to use. 

All you have to do for this one is simply plug in a usb flash drive, and when the prompt comes up, select Speed up my system.

If it doesn't prompt you to configure Readyboost to specify how much to use, you can open Computer, right click on your flash drive and click properties. 

From here, select the Readyboost tab, and you can configure how much space to use on the drive, or disable Readyboost whenever you want.

Now remember, this doesn't come close to replacing RAM, but it does help a little if you have a spare flash drive to use.

Also remember, the faster the flash drive, the better.

All of this combined should make your Vista computer run much smoother.