How to make Mavericks faster

Firstly, what Mac do you have, and how much RAM?
Mavericks should be fast. If you are not getting the performance, something is wrong.
Next: stay away from apps like "RAM optimizer". You don't need them on 10.9, you really didn't need them much in 10.8, and you sure as hell don't want to use a version from a previous OS.

Memory management is completely different ib 10.9, and it's not something you need to oversee.

If you have got any third-party apps that monitor, "optimize", "clean" or do any other such nonsense, then uninstall them and see if that helps. Anything else that runs constantly in the background, too.

 

Try a clean install

Try a clean install of 10.9, then manually add your apps back. Might be a fair amount of cruft from running 10.6 all that time.

 

I had much the same issue you have. I updated from Snow Leopard and everything was a bit slow. There were a few things I learned when searching around.

As soon as you update, Spotlight will index your entire hard drive. It took about 4 hours for it to finish on my MBP. This takes up system resources and can make things a bit slower.

A new feature is that Mavericks will create a local backup of everything without telling you. This is useful if you don't regularly back things up, but I have an external HDD that I use for backups so I disabled the auto backup
(Spotlight will reindex your HDD after you do this so you won't see much of a speed boost until that is done).

I had other issues too, but after a few days everything worked itself out and it is running much smoother. Just give it time and I'm sure it will get settled it and become faster for you too.

 

I've never done a clean install, but during class I just copy and pasted all of my important files, saved my iTunes playlists, and then freshly installed Maverick. It's working even better than I expected.

I tried a clean install last night and then re-installed everyone using Time Machine, but that defeated the purpose of the clean install as all of my settings were ported back. Consequently, the lag/sluggishness ported back, as well. It may take some time, but doing it manually is certainly worth the trouble.