The best utilities and tools that help performance are simply nothing at all. Most new laptops come bloated with software that bogs a system down. Dell laptops for example will have services running for a fingerprint reader regardless if you have a fingerprint reader on you system. I typically go through each item in add/remove programs (or programs and features for vista/7) and also through startup and non-microsoft services. I uninstall or disable anything not needed. Dell's wireless utility can take hundreds of MB of space, for what? If you uninstall it, you can still load the base driver, and just use the Windows wireless manager. Run a defrag after everything is cleared up and you'll have a system that's ready to perform.