Optimizing XP

The main "service" that they are offering likely consists of the following:

1. Removing un-needed software, icons and links.
Retail PC systems often have "extra's" pre-installed that for most users, just slow down the system, and take up hard drive space.

2. Install critical and security updates for XP.
The OEM version of XP is up to 6 months old now. Many updates should be installed on all systems.

3. Device driver updates. Again, the drivers on the system have likely been updated.

4. BIOS settings. If they are doing a thourough job, they will "optimize the BIOS settings.

5. Defragment. They may run a 3rd party defragmentation program that does a better job than XP's built in tool.

While there are many things that can be done, I would want proof of the 30% speed improvement. I suspect, that on 1 particular benchmark, they were able to show a 30% improvement for 1 system. I would be very surprised if setup tweaking produced more than a 10% improvement.
For the average user, I would update XP, and the device drivers, and un-install any software that I was not going to use.

For some good XP tweaks, check out the XP section at www.onecomputerguy.com

Chas

LOL answer 2 is right on what to do, but i'd take it back to the place and tell them to shove it and just optimize it, thats so cheesy they would sell that to you all full of garbage. Anyways ya remove all the garbage they put in and clean whatever else needs to be cleaned.

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