Little confused so HELPP!!!

Im not sure if this is a software issue or a hardware but here goes. I have an hp 9035nr and i like it, its pretty smooth(when it wants to be). tho my friend has a hp 9040us. i believe strongly that that paticular model is programed or set up differently then mine. Its amazing to see him execute programs alot faster and run smoother sometimes than mine. the specs are identical with the exception that he has about 100 more HD space, but thats IT!!! i dont understand why his would run faster with almost all of his programs running at start up while i have pretty much nothing at start up and still end up beating me in terms of spead!. this kills me coz i paid alot of money for something that feels idk(cheap) or rejected. I would just like to kno if any professionals out there can understand where im coming from and give me some advise. I like my computer dont get me wrong, but i prefer it to run like it should. Please HELP. THANKS in advance

 

A couple of thoughts that come to mind, without knowing any specifics:

1. Have you run Disk Cleanup?
2. Have you defragged?

Other than that, not sure what you mean by speed. If you mean boot up time, that's not a good indicator of much. It can depend on whether the system does a system test at start up (many do), whether your antivirus program scans boot records at start up (many do and strongly recommended).

Have you run benchmarks on both machines to compare those numbers?

 

honestly i havent done any numerical test like that, but with just the naked eye, its clear that his runs alot faster than mine... example. we both start up a program(bf2142) at the same time, his would start 3or 4 seconds before mine would and he's running alot of programs in the background where as to me, im barely running anything. i have defrag and its just unmatched as to how much faster his is over mine.

 

Do you both have the same speed of ram and hdd? that could make the difference.

Or if your harddrive is almost full, and his has lots of room left.

Also, in my experience, windows just seems to slow down with time, no matter how well you maintain it; if you've had yours for significantly longer without a reformat, I'd expect his to run faster.