Posted 10/13/2008 at 07:32:12am

I've spent a lot of time troubleshooting friends' Windows boxes, and the #1 question I get asked is "why did my computer slow down?" There are lots of potential reasons -- memory pressure, disk performance, degraded internet connectivity, rogue software, etc. -- so answering the question can take a lot of work.

A killer app would watch for bottlenecks, and provide useful feedback: "Your system is running slowly because Microsoft Outlook and Norton Antivirus are both trying to use your hard drive at the same time. Quitting one of them would speed up your computer."