When I said "affect performance" I really meant "Will that spyware/adware/100 installed programs I dont need have a chance in hell of making it over to MY partition to make is slow?"
This computer will be for 2 users. I just want to run 1-2 programs and insall nothing.. no updates.. no-no-no nothing! The other user typically has over 40 programs running in the background, and at least 4 various file sharing clients, not to mention copious amounts of spyware/adware and latest versions of flash, winblows media player, etc.
Is the only way out to buy a 2nd PC or does partitioning work in THAT regard for my purpose?
Thanks again for all your replies. I guess I had a different perspective on performance.. to me a CLEAN and clutter free system IS 'performance' as most of the people I know cant make use of what they have already! My own 1.3Ghz Athlon PC, 224mb ram, boots windows xp from a cold start in under 18 seconds, while my friends P4 2.8 Ghz, 512mb ram takes ~5 minutes!! (because of the above mentioned "upgrades")
Thanks,
Igor