How can I make my PB G4 Run Faster?

[macktheknife]

Hi folks. Just wondering how I can up the speed on my PB 500Mhz G4 with 512 MB RAM. What programs does OS X normally run that are unnecessary and can be turned off? For instance, when I turn on Process Viewer, I get a long list of programs running even if I am running no major apps like Word, iTunes, etc.? Any suggestions?

[Catfish_Man]

...open terminal and type "top -a -e" (without the quotes). This will make a cumulative list of the resources the tasks on your system are using. If anything useless is taking up a lot of CPU time, kill it. Also, type "vm_stat", and if there's something other than 0 by pageouts, then more ram would speed your machine up (with 512MB that shouldn't be a problem. For most usage 384 is just fine). btw, TruBlueEnvironment is Classic. It usually eats up 2-8% of my G3's cpu when I'm not using it.