DoubleVision

Hi. I hope I have posted in an ok spot here. I am a relatively novice laptop owner/operator. Though I do ok with keeping it running fairly smoothly with the standard antivirus/antispyware stuff, I feel there is more I could do to free up space. I keep things organized in files, compact files and throw stuff away that I don't need anymore. I keep internet files emptied, empty the cookie files and clean the history regularly. The question I have is this though...what about the stuff that sits in my temporary files? I know temporary internet stuff is safe to dump if I don't want it junking up the system, but when I did a search and opened a file called "Temp", there was some junk in there, some images, uninstallers, bundle programs...are these things I have to keep or can they be deleted as well as they would appear somewhere else on my harddrive? I don't delete things without first educating myself. Any advice is greatly appreciated.