Speed Up The Performance Of Vista

I apologize in advance if this is longer than needed. Long question short, what can I do to improve my system performance or what am I doing wrong to improve it? Before I continue, I’ve read the “Speed Up the Performance of Vista” thread numerous times with no real success. My laptop isn’t extremely slow, it tends to be a little sluggish when scrolling on web pages [Mozilla and IE(have tried both 32 and 64bit editions of IE)], when scrolling in my music in iTunes (especially in Cover Flow), or when the system is left on for a day or two. I started with a clean install to avoid problems and to update all drivers necessary. On the Cover Flow, I have a friend with a latop with half the power of mine and it scrolls through the Cover Flow flawlessly (he has Home Premium 32bit).

Throughout the forum threads on this issue I see a lot that Vista simply takes time to update everything necessary. I’ve been running on it for about 4 months now. All drivers up to date, all Windows updates downloaded and installed as soon as they come out, and the system in protected with anti virus software. Here come the inquiries. 1) Can that be a problem? I am running McAfee on it. 2) Also, is my computer simply not able to handle all of it? When sluggish, the faster I try to scroll, especially iTunes, the slower it actually scrolls, obviously, but the CPU never goes past 25-35% of usage. Same with RAM, staying at 40% or so. My lowest score in my index score is my memory with a 5.0. Not sure of the brand currently installed, but I know its 4GB at 667, I’m a Crucial fan, 3) so upgrading to Crucial memory also for 4GB but at 800 it will it significantly increase my score? 4) Therefore performance? I’ve tried using the system with all the neat features disabled, transparency, etc, but same issues remain. I’d like to think my system can handle the neat features. .....