Windows Vista forum: My computer is quite slow. Do I need to upgrade?

When a computer's 5 years old, it's probably time to upgrade, but if you're looking for quick cheap help, you could add another 1 GB of RAM. Since you have a 32 bit system, you can't use much more than 1 GB. RAM is very cheap these days, I just bought 8 GB for my laptop for $40. Another thing to check would be startup programs. Hold down the Windows key and press R, then type in MSCONFIG and hit enter. Click the Startup tab. Here you can uncheck everything but your antivirus program. These things can often slow a computer needlessly.
One other thing you need to carefully consider is that the time to get a PC with Windows 7 is rapidly coming to a close, and a lot of us really don't like Windows 8. So if you're thinking about getting a new PC, you should give careful consideration to that.

Good luck.

can also affect system speed.

Here is a link you can make use of to either reset your services to DEFAULT for your specific flavor of Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, etc.) or you can make use of what is shown in the SAFE column.
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-vista-service-pack-2-service-configurations/

Although you just mention running Vista I hope you do have SP 2 installed and if not you should do so.

You can also take a look in Task Manager and see exactly which processes are using all those CPU cycles. I suggest that because just sitting there doing some web browsing the CPU utilization should be lower than 30 to 45% and you could easily have some malware problems.

It wouldn't hurt to download and run MalwareBytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/ and also Super Anti-Malware http://www.superantispyware.com/ and I would suggest running them from Safe Mode the first time.