Quoting Monty Python, 'don't practice your alliterations on me.'
Circling back to this. My laptop performance issues, as it turns out, were caused by fluff blocking the inlet of my laptop fan. Who would have known 
I actually like to think of it as a high quality air filter, but my CPU didn't seem to appreciate it, and was suffering from thermally induced speed-throttling.
Fluff removed, Perspective is quite a lot faster now!