MacBook Pro running slow - help

[31 YNOT]

My macbook is about 2 years old now and it seems to run a lot slower than It was when it was new. I was wondering if there is anyway to maybe "clean it up" so it runs better again. I dont think it is over heating(fans are hardly ever over 1300 rpm).
Any help would be great, more details about the macbook in my sig

 

[GoCubsGo]

You can download Onyx and it will help spruce things up. I'd try that and also how much hard drive space do you have?

 

[31 YNOT]

i have 17.8 GB of free space left, ill try to DL that program and see what happens thanks

 

[GoCubsGo]

i have 17.8 GB of free space left, ill try to DL that program and see what happens thanks

In all honesty. that is your problem. You need to clear that HDD out. Perhaps an external?

PS...welcome to MR. Your name is mildly funny to me.

 

[31 YNOT]

In all honesty. that is your problem. You need to clear that HDD out. Perhaps an external?

PS...welcome to MR. Your name is mildly funny to me.

would putting a bigger HD in my computer help? like just xfering from the one i have now to a bigger one? Maybe a ram upgrade?

Thanks for the welcome, my name comes from my plates on my truck, and there like that so i can be a smarta** and say y not when people ask why i have that.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Of course a larger HDD will help but if you're not willing to brave the install of a new HDD I would simply get a decent external. You can even set it up over a wireless network if you'd rather not be connected all of the time. That is how I use one of my externals so I have my iTunes accessible from me desktop, laptop, and Apple TV.
If you only have 1 gb ram I would increase that as well. It never hurts, but the HDD space is definitely close to being the culprit from a quick glance.

I thought your name had something to do with your age, but it is still cute.

 

[31 YNOT]

ok, I've tried down loading the Onyx thing 2 times now and both times it has said "mounting failed" in the download box ive never come across this before?

Nope not my age, I'm only 20

 

[31 YNOT]

bump

 

[Animalk]

I have also been experiencing momentary periods of sluggish performance on very basic tasks the last couple of months. I am running the latest version of Leopard and I have Time Machine using an external USB hard drive. Whenever I go for several days without letting Time Machine connect to its drive, it gets a bit sluggish with basic tasks like Finder and what not. I have about 40GB of space free on my hard disk which is more then enough to work with.

I usually draw the line at 20GB of free space on all my machines. Once I reach this point, I either clean out all the junk or I upgrade.

Also file indexing for spotlight is very expensive on memory utilization and processing power as it is a very complex data structure in memory which is continuously updated and optimized while you do your thing. The same goes for the QuickLook feature in OS X.

I never reset any of my PRAM or NVRAM (I think I did it once in almost 1.5 years).

I have done my best to investigate this particular problem over the last couple of months when time permits and I have conclude, so far, that I should just accept it as the features that are slowing things down (nothing significant mind you) are well worth it.

EDIT: Also I find the longer my machine has been running, the snappier things get which is a strong point of OS X's memory utilization algorithms.