I performed a search and found various, somewhat stale, threads with advice on how to maintain optimal computer performance. I thought I'd ask the experts here to provide me with advice on what I should be doing to keep my laptop running in tip-top shape. Here are the things that I'm currently doing:

Operating the McAfee suite of anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. programs. The anti-virus scan runs weekly, and I get automatic updates whenever they are available.

I've set the Windows updates to "automatic", so whenever Microsoft issues patches, etc. I get them and install them.

Running AdAware from time to time. I have the free version and I don't think I can schedule it to run at a specified time, but I try to run it manually every week or so.

I'm pretty sure that McAfee defrags my hard drive once a quarter or so.
I have no idea if anything is cleaning/deleting unused or odd registry keys.

A post in OMNI offered this link: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=133269
that seems to have some decent advice on how to keep a computer clean and remove viruses.

I don't seem to have any issues or viruses today, though I noticed that my hard drive is starting to reach maximum capacity (I do have a 500 GB external hard drive and I'm slowly starting to shift data there to create additional capacity on the C: drive).

I locked into the McAfee subscription through August of this year, and don't really want to pay for additional software at this time, but, if there are programs out there that are "must-have's" and they cost a little, I would be willing to part with some money to get some peace of mind.

Thanks in advance.