Tom and Bob's answers are correct for what you asked.BUT, your PC's performance really isn't affected directly by how full the hard drive is. That is a common misconception. How efficiently you work in an office is much more dependent on how organized and/or cluttered your desk is - not how full your filing cabinet next to the desk is. That's sort of like how a computer operates - your PC is VASTLY more affected by the startup list of programs that begin when your PC boots. And a couple of malware processes or an antivirus program gone bad (or sabotaged by some malware) can kill the performance on an otherwise nice PC. Quickbooks, Adobe Acrobat, Realplayer, MusicMatch, all antivirus programs, most HP printer and Lexmark printer software, and a million others all have background processes that try to "check in with the mother ship (those company's websites)" periodically. These examples can slow a machine down much more than whether you have a couple hundred or couple thousand deleted messages still sitting in the deleted items mailbox. And the newest $3000 PC can be almost immediately killed if the kids wind up getting some full-out malware like doriot or Zango or WildTangent or any of a million others. If the performance is really not what it used to be, removing or turning off some of the problem programs can often help. Sometimes even if you turn them off it won't - and in that case, it is usually easiest to just reinstall Windows.
Howard
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