Switch off unnecessary animations
Ever since Windows Vista (and some would argue Windows XP), the operating system has had fancy graphics and animated flourishes that did little to improve productivity. If these are slowing things down, it is easy to switch off everything and run on the bare essentials.
To do this, open that Start Menu and start typing in 'Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows'. Click on this option and from the scroll menu untick everything you don't wish to see on the desktop (such as shadows, smooth fonts, etc.) Click on OK and this will change the desktop to something more basic looking.
On systems other than Windows 10, switching everything off gives the desktop a Windows 95-style look and feel. It is surprising to note how much of the so-called 'flat look' of Windows 10 relies on graphical flourishes when you switch everything off.
Switch your software
Some programs are more resource-hungry than others; it could be that your browser is slowing down your laptop without you realising it. Google Chrome has been found to be a particularly bad offender in this regard, eating up thousands of megabytes of memory while doing comparatively simple tasks.
To work out if there are any programs secretly gobbling up your bandwidth, you can launch the Task Manager by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting it. Click 'More details' to expand the window and show the resource use of each currently running program. From there, you can click the column headers to sort the list, showing which programs are using the most CPU capacity, memory and so on.
If you spot any particularly heinous offenders, swapping them for alternative program - such as ditching Chrome for Firefox, for example - can give your PC a new lease of life, particularly if it's a program that you usually have running.
