My computer is a Dell XPS 1330M, purchased January 2008. The computer itself, and tech support, have both been a nightmare since I've purchased them. But, I wanted to talk about something specific, so I'll save the other issues for later.
I noticed recently that typing on my computer became very sluggish. I would type a sentence, and I would have to wait a few seconds for the text to appear on the screen. It didn't matter what program I was in: Firefox, IE, Notepad. I'm a fast typer, but no other computers I've ever used (whether older versions of Windows, or several versions of Linux, or Solaris) have had this problem unless there was a huge memory hog. I could not identify a big memory hog through the Task Manager. Deleting temp files and defragging did not help.
I found the solution on another blog. The problem is the Dell feature that allows you to access media without booting into Windows - called MediaDirect. I disabled the InstantOffice feature through the settings inside MediaDirect (which is on my start menu), and immediately I could feel the mouse was less sluggish (I hadn't even noticed it was sluggish). I tested typing in Notepad, and it felt fine. No reboot was necessary, although I did anyway for good course - it is Windows after all. No problems with typing since then! Admittedly it's only been a day.
Interesting to note that the problem began around the time I bought my iPhone. Shortly after buying it I moved all my computer's contacts into Windows Contacts, which makes it available to InstantOffice. I think that's what made it so slow. The author of the post I referenced above wrote that the next day his computer became sluggish again, and removing MediaDirect fixed it for good. For me, simply disabling it did the trick.
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