Something I came across you may enjoy. It may help the Non-Tech person in you.
A long read, so check it out when it is slow.  ;D

http://www.myconnectionserver.com/whitepapers/understanding_speed_test_results.html

I will read this in a bit,,,but,um,,when stuff  is slow,and ya cleaned-cleared and the rest,,,, scream for help ;D .
yep thats what I do,lol

Heres a couple to test your speed.
Mine sucks!!!!

http://testinternetspeed.org/
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/

This may perhaps be a  tip on Computer speed for some of you.

If you open Control panel and go to System.

You should see an option in blue under System - Windows Experience Index. Click it. It gives you a score on Processor, Memory, Graphics, Gaming Graphics, Primary hard disk transer rate.

Look for the lowest score. if there is a point difference in the low score and the others that is your bottleneck.

My computers lowest score is Gaming graphics at 5.6 The others  are all 5.9. There is little I can now do to substantially speed up my system. I have 6 Gb ram. If I added 2 Gb more it would increase some of the transfer speed for watching Videos.  My Power system failed and I put in a Power system that was twice as big and added a new Graphics card that was the largest I could put in my computer due to the constraint of my mother board.     It brought my lowest score - Graphics card up from 4.9 to 5.9 a full point.

There are other things you can do to speed up your computer though. Many people have three and four browser Toolbars. They are memory hogs. Screen savers and other add ons use memory and CPU power. If you can't live without it keep it, otherwise get rid of it. Every add on slows things up a bit.

Kim Komando has a list of stuff you can do to speed up your computer.
http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=8858

You also may have programs you no longer use. You can delete them.

If you go to Control Panel - Programs and Features you can look at what programs are installed.  You may have some Games that take up lots of memory.

To find out whose programs they are and what their size is - Click On View on the Menu bar - Click on - "Choose Details"
You will get a pop up and see boxes that can be checked and unchecked.  You can Check Publisher, Version, Size, Publisher or whatever options you want and click OK. They will all be shown for the program list. It helps in identifying programs and other details.

Don't delete any programs your not sure of.

If you have never degfragmented your hard drive and either put a lot of stuff on it or its more than a year old, you chould try running disk fragmenter. It will first analyze your hard drive to see if its necessary to de-fragment.

Running disk cleanup is sometimes well worth it. It removes the thousands of temporary files that litter the hard drive and well as broken files and dead programs, but check the options before you click OK.
I don't, but some people decide to compress some files - I would suggest not compressing digital photographs. It degrades the photographs for some purposes.
I also would suggest adding a internal HD or an external HD.  The external is nice because it can act as a backup for all your files. Massive HD's are very cheap today.

Fine!!!!
I test my internet speed test, through this site www.ip-details.com/internet-speed-test
It provides the best results for speed test and also has the details about to Search and find ip address's............

Quote from: thilak on July 05, 2011, 12:04:56 AM
Fine!!!!
I test my internet speed test, through this site www.ip-details.com/internet-speed-test
It provides the best results for speed test and also has the details about to Search and find ip address's............

The site you recommend reported an accurate upload speed for me, but a download speed roughly one-tenth of what I have, actually one-third of its reported upload speed. NOBODY provides ISP at a higher upload speed than download speed.

I think your site's testing engine is flawed, at least in my case.

From SpeedTest, I get the following:

- From Shanghai, to San Francisco, via my VPN:



- From Shanghai, to San Francisco, with VPN disabled:



Not too shabby...  The download with the VPN kind of sucks, but otherwise - it's passable performance.  Enough to stream Netflix and Pandora and Hulu!

www.speakeasy.net

GOOD testing.