'Tweaking' Vista on a new computer?

Factual Questions
1

Six months ago my father purchased a new computer from a certain Big Box store. As part of the purchase he was advised about the extended warranty (which he declined) and some of the software he could have installed there before he took it home. He could have had them get his firewalls, anti-spyware, etc up and running along with the technicians performing ‘several’ tweaks to Vista that would make it run faster and more effectively. He declined to spend the hundred bucks or so to have that done and is having no problems.

Yesterday I bought a new computer* from a different store, one of the club deals w no customer service at all. It too has Vista, and it got me wondering - what were these ‘tweaks’ the techs at the other place were gonna do to Vista to make it run faster and better? Anything I should mess with? Or was this just some upselling garbage most folks don’t need?

*if you’re wondering, its a Dell w an AMD Athalon 64 x2 Dual-Core 5600+ processor, 500 gb hd, 3gb memory and a 22" high def widescreen flat panel.

2

I don’t know, but I saw that the current *PC World * has an article about making Vista run more efficiently.

3

Here’s a recent article from The Register that addresses just that question.

I threw tons of stuff away on my Vista laptop but it still can’t match the older, supposedly slower Linux desktop.

4

I hadn’t actually read the article in my prior post and to be honest it doesn’t really say anything we shouldn’t already know.
Some of the comments are more informative than the article and my favourite comment begins:

You could also try Ccleaner which is chicken soup for windows, if it doesn’t help it won’t harm (much!)

I ran it for the first time yesterday although it has been lying there forgotten for a couple of months. Did no harm, no noticeable improvement. Others may tell a different story, depending on the amount of accumulated crap on their system.