The thing that made the biggest difference for me when it came to experienced slowness was more or less always created by OEMs. Bundled 3rd-party bloatware is

The thing that made the biggest difference for me when it came to experienced slowness was more or less always created by OEMs. Bundled 3rd-party bloatware is one thing, but often the problem would be the actual drivers or utilities that came with the machine. "Utilities" could usually be removed, but if the drivers are bad there wasn't much to to except try an older or newer release. The second biggest problem was mandatory antivirus software installed by IT departments. (That is, on my machine. For a lot of people a bigger problem was adware and spyware.) For the benefit of those who are younger than me: Reinstalling stock Windows used to be standard procedure. Today the situation feels a lot better but I still prefer Linnux.