It is important to keep your computer optomised. When you regularly optomise your computer there are fewer problems with it, the hardware doesn't die off as soon and thus your computer lasts longer.

I had a Pentium 166 that I kept optomized and my friend has a P2 333 that he rarely optomized and before he doubled his memory his computer and my old one where roughly the same in speed. My old Pentium runs some of the newer programs.

Anyway, to optomize on a Windows or DOS system you run Scandisk and then Defrag. If you have Win98 then you follow that up with a Disk Cleanup.

You should also get rid of any programs and files that you don't need or don't want. Remember to Uninstall them before you delete them.

This will clean your computer up somewhat. If you want to go one step further then you shut your computer down, unplug it, take it outside or somewhere that you can get dirty and take the case off. Blow out all the dust. If you smoke in front of your computer this dust and other crap will build up fast. It will be almost as bad if you have a cat, but at least they're cute and fuzzy.