slow e525 laptop / emachines

[laptopsmasher]

HI,
how can I speed up this e525 laptop that i was given. it has hardly anything stored on it and i have reset it to have a basic appearance.
so i turn it on and try to open firefox and it is still waiting to open it by the time my partner has finished all his jobs on his laptop!!. I know this is an old laptop BUT!
I have ccleaned it and am a bit uncertain what i can take off "automatic" on the services page - if stuff is slowing it down.
I dont want to do fancy stuff - just open it, use word and browse internet. no games, etc.
How bad and slow can a laptop be.
It has 1gb of mem and 160 gb HHD. My partners old dell only has 190GB HHD and its really fast in comparison.

cheers for any help before I smash it up in frustration!

 

[Ubrales]

Disable (not delete) programs from the start menu. Run an anti virus scan. Run Spybot Search & Destroy. Defrag the hard disk. Try and add more RAM.