You need to see what programs you have running in the background, if you have lots then you'll need to grab yourself some more RAM or disable them at startup. You could also try increasing your Virtual Memory allocation.

To be honest Steve, RAM is really cheap nowadays so get onto Dell Website and buy yourself a couple of sticks, it'll be a simple plug and play jobbie.

Also do some general housekeeping in terms of what programs you have installed and how much space you have on your main hard drive, I'd expect you to see an improvement in performance if you can clear 30% of your current hard drive.

Hope that helps
Tim