"… Windows 2000, which I think is the best Microsoft operating system ever."

I always felt that way, though I finally gave that title to XP, mostly for System Restore and a few other niceties. I reset the bubblegum interface to classic on every install. Other than launching programs and looking at files in Explorer, I 'interact' with the OS very little. I use Everything for search rather than Windows indexing , Flash Renamer, Revo Uninstaller, Process Explorer etc. Microsoft has gradually added useful functionality but I often find the 3rd party utilities more useful. The basic OS functions of managing the file system and executing applications seem pretty much good enough for me.

I can understand the appeal of an integrated multi-device, access anything anywhere vision for many folks, but it's not something I feel a need for. Of course, if I could actually afford all those gadgets, I might feel differently.

On the original topic, if you feel that those mechanic tools actually improve anything, go for it. I haven't seen it. Fixing all the 'problems' they found felt good but that was about it. I only rarely even run defrag and I rarely, if ever perceive that it's yielded a significant performance boost - at least on my old, small drives. I run CCleaner and back up the registry periodically, that's about it; along with AV & FW of course. Microsoft already has a pretty solid desktop OS, but the traditional desktop PC may well go the way of the public phone booth and dead tree newspapers, so they have to try to keep up. Things like 3D, video editing will trail but I suppose with enough bandwidth and mobile horsepower, those will migrate to the 'cloud' as well. No country for old men :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken