It depends on what you use your machine for. My primary box does more for me than just 3D (I have render boxes to do the grunt work) and this machine does email, general business use and 3D. Turn off indexing? Hell no, I like being able to find my files fast :) Turn off virtual memory? Hell no. Right now I have some 200meg paged out on it from running but mostly dormant programs... I don't want to have to shut those down. The visual effevts stuff is ok to turn off, but I liek it. It soothes my eyes and I am not at all above wanting the thing I look at 20 hours a day to be easy on my eyes. It doesn't slow me down any - but then I have a pretty fast machine and a good video card. I woudl suggest anyone tweaking take it slow, and make sure you try one thing at a time. it's pretty easy to hose up a box.