“I can’t take this anymore!” Victor screamed. He closed the Word document—no, thank you, Word, he did not want to save it. Two minutes later, the document actually closed. Victor clicked on Start so he could click on Turn Off Computer. Five minutes later, his computer finally shut down.

Fuming, Victor unplugged it and took it to PC Club. “Why is this thing so slow?” he asked Matt, the tech guy. Matt plugged it in. After a while, the desktop icons finally appeared. Matt typed in several commands at blinding speed.

“Look at this,” he said. “You have one backup program that is using up 90 percent of your processor. Not to mention that you have a slow processor. Your processor is like the engine of your car. You don't want a car with a two-cylinder engine; you want eight cylinders, right? Plus, you’ve got too many icons on your desktop. Put all the icons into folders. Pause that backup program. Reduce the number of programs that are active at Start-Up. That should speed things up a bit.”

“Can't I just install an 'eight cylinder' processor?” Victor asked innocently.

“No way,” Matt chuckled. “I hear that question a lot, but I can’t help you. If you want a new processor, you’ve got to buy a whole new laptop.”