Could turning on disk compression actually speed up disk access?
Probably not, the amount of compression you will get for most things will be trivial. Applications themselves compress poorly, as do most things that come in large files, audio, video, pictures (well, these things do compress well, but that’s usually built into the file type, e.g. an mp3 is already compressed). It appears that 1.8 inch hard drives are only offered at 4200 RPM, so I doubt you’ll be able to pick up a faster drive. Your best bet is to buy more memory. Windows does use every bit of memory. This article describes it fairly well. The more memory you have, the more windows can keep off the drive, and the faster things will load.
