Doing a defrag

[#1]

Have just spoken to a friend that is in the middle of doing a defrag on his machine
He reckons it's about time that he did one as his machine is getting very slow.
He reckons this is the first time that he has done one since he upgraded to xp. About 2 years ago
As it's been so long since he has done one it's obviously taking a long time to complete ( I try to do one about once a month and complete it in a few minutes)reckons he got  about half way through his yesterday afternoon and is convinced that his Internet speed that he has always said is not much faster than dial-up is already much faster. I am aware that programes like Word,  Excel etc open up quicker , but I wasn't aware that It affected web pages . Is this so, and if so, would the slow speeds that some people are having be in some cases  partly to blame because they haven't done a defrag on their machine for some considerable time ??.
P.s I also reckon to do a disk clean-up  at the same time.

[#2]

Fragmentation is the process of files being broken up into disparate parts that end up scattered around the hard drive rather being in tidy, contiguous blocks.

I suppose it wouldn't directly affect download speeds, but all the processes that are active at the time, including not just the browser, but many other things that Windows* is doing, are slowed down because it just takes longer to find all the separate bits of these files.
It is best to go through and delete junk files before doing a defrag, i.e. don't tidy up the rubbish, then throw it away.
*Gratuitous ad for linux here.. linux file systems are inherently tidier, so don't need defragging.

[#3]

I never do defrags (in fact that function isn't available).
I never have any junk files to clean up either.
My log files automatically get archived and dropped when they are really old.
I haven't noticed any performance hit in two years.

[#4]

Do I detect a subliminal message somewhere in there Jeremy

[#5]

Perhaps a just faint hint of subliminality! 

[#6]

As I've said elsewhere on this forum, defrag is a great way of speeding up anybody's pc. I would recommend diskeeper, which comes with a 30 day trial period.
The only reason I ever got it myself was my pc had a fragmentation level of 6.2 fragments per file (!) and was taking forever to do anything. I found that windows defrag, and just about every other defrag on the market, would only defrag up to a certain level and so I was stuck. Diskeeper did it, admittedly after a week of running non-stop, and I've never looked back.

[#7]

a good way of stoping your hard drive gettin to messy is to partion of part of your hard drive and turn on page fileing on that partion and turn page f off on your parrtion that windows op is on.
i found this speeded up my computer no end as your not constasntly writing and rewriting on the section your windows op is on. plus my defrag is cut down to 30mins from like 3hours