Physical memory usage at 23% when idle. 8GB RAM normal?

[10010101]

Laptop performance keeps slowing down incredibly and I don't know why.

 

[BadPeteNo]

Do you have a bunch of background programs running? ie.. too many useless messenger programs, useless antivirus, torrent client, etc

Check what's running in the task manager. Then check under add/remove programs. See what's not supposed to be there. Google anything you don't recognize.