i have a brand mew laptop that is running slow as molasses. i just retired my 8 year old dell computer for a new laptop. my old computer had 60gb hard drive, 356 ram, and a 1.,6ghz Pentium 4 processor. this new laptop has a 1.6 ghz DUAL amd processor, windows 7, a 250 gb hard drive, 3 gb ram etc. its running slow what do i do? itsays processes 65, cpu usage, is 10-20 percent, and physical memory is 39 percent. also it says my max harddrive space is 220..when i paid for 250. and it says useable space is 196! i havent installed anything but firefox and flash player.

If it's a branded one - Dell, Compaq or whatever, try removing any stuff you don't need that the manufacturer installed - commonly termed 'bloatware'. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

"itsays processes 65" That's quite a few. I have 40 processes running on this machine. "also it says my max harddrive space is 220..when i paid for 250" The difference is decimal vs binary (1000 vs 1024) when calculating storage capacity. Actual capacity = advertised capacity x 0.931. In your case, 250GB x 0.931 = 232.75GB. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ar... I assume the "missing" 12.75GB is the hidden partition used for system recovery.

wait so are more processes a good thingz?

"wait so are more processes a good thingz? No. Fewer is better.

so did i get a lemon?

No you just have several things running at one time taking up resources. I agree with jam about the hard drive space. Factory or branded machines often come this way, with many programs set to run at start up. Supposedly to make your computing life easier but, if your not using the program it is just eating resources for nothing. This will slow the system down. I have win 7 and I have 29 processes running. Likely I want to go like my grandfather did. Peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming at the top of my lungs like the passengers in his car. (\__/) (='.'=) (")_(")