I’ve got a laptop which has served me well for the last few years. I love the way it looks, it goes around everywhere with me, but lately it’s started feeling a bit tired. I’ve tried running CCleaner on it and deleting some of my older stuff, but it really needs a boost. Anything you can suggest without going out to buy a new laptop?

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have enough RAM in the machine. You can do this by opening your Task Manager and looking at your memory usage. Make sure your computer has as much RAM as it can hold. If this isn’t an issue, you may find that your computer is having problems before of the performance of the disk. One thing you can do here is to replace it with a solid state disk (SSD), which are much faster than standard hard disks, and are now getting quite affordable.

For example, the 128GB SSDNow V Series SATA II 2.5″ Solid State Drive comes as a bundle for under $200. That’s the price on sale from Buy.com this week. SSD drives give your computer a massive boost as they’re much faster than standard disks; this is particularly noticeable if you use it as your system disk. Of course, with a laptop you normally only have one disk, you once you transfer everything over you should see the boost you’re after. Try it out.