Re - inventing the Wheel

............I use this expression all the time ( at least in my head )
mostly as a frustration but quite often as an explanation for the state of affairs.
I mean , of course , that it seems that duplication or re - doing of something seems the norm.
Here we go. The baby laptop was xtra slow this morning.
Recall , that this e machine , 10 " screen , small laptop has had a memory upgrade and a solid state drive installed. All this effort to increase the speed of the computer. The initial cost $ 130 after bonus points BUT $100 to get a full Windows program , $40 for a 2 GB memory chip and $110 for a solid state drive. Thus , I have a $380 laptop. 

I've explored the possibility of buying a new laptop or i - Pad , etc. The problem is plug in ports. I still need an USB port for my video glasses and it is handy to have xtra ports for attaching devices.

As mentioned , this AM , really slow.

I went to YouTube ( where else , would I go ) and watched two videos , essentially , titled , " make your computer faster'.
After 18 minutes , I got the feeling that for me and my emachine , only one item really applied.
The suggestion was to go to the ' start - up menu ' and delete any programs not needed at start up b/c you could manually bring those programs into service as you needed them.

BTW , some suggestions involved using CNET a website for computer programs and upgrades. I'm leery of using CNET b/c in the past , along w/ what you want CNET sends a bunch of programs attached for search engines etc.

I trimmed the start - up list and re - started. And , yes , the emachine is slightly faster.
Google is our main program and loading gmail seems to take a long time. After the tweaks to start - up , there was an obvious change in the response time. Now , we'll see if this performance continues over time.

Weather : is all about the wind. The wind has been gusting for at least 36 h and I estimate leaf cover is in the 10 % range. In fact , only 2 trees out of the 40 that we can see have more than a few leaves left.
Temperature is 46 F on the back deck.