I have Vista HB on a Dell 520 with a dual core 3.08ghz cpu with 1.5 ram, and it is slower to boot or shutdown and less responsive in some basic tasks than XP (on the same machine), or even my old W/98se with a 650mhz cpu. But it is overall the most stable OS yet.
You definitely need more memory, and even though i only have home basic i could use 2gb of total ram. NewEgg has 1gb of DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) for about 25.00 with S+H.
You want to examine what is set to load with Windows. Go to Start>Run, type msconfig and hit Start up and find what is checked. You can move the column sizes from the top if needed. Programs like MS Office do not need to load with Windows, among other things. Do a Google type search of all entries so you know what is running, and besides deselecting unnecessary programs , you should then be able to check the list periodically to see what has been added secretly (from ITunes, etc. to malware). A freeware programs called WinPatrol is a help in alerting you to this. And an programs like StartUp list can give you a list of things that load with Windows
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwstartup.htmlOther tweaks that i have found helpful include disabling unnecessary services (Start>Run (or Windows key + R), type services.msc and hit Enter) as this guide shows:
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html You may want to create a restore point first. (Start>Run rstrui.exe)
And by going to System Properties (hold down the Windows key and hit the Pause/Break key) and choosing Advanced System Settings>Advanced>Performance, you can deselect things like Fade Out menus, etc. You can also access the System Restore functions by hitting System Protection rather than Advanced in System Properties
I also found TweakVI (freeware) useful in finding more tweaks, like speeding up menu response, and turn off extras etc. But you have to carefully consider all the options.
http://www.softplatz.com/Soft/Utilities/Diagnostics-Optimizers/TweakVI-Basic.html Hope this helps.
