Macbook Pro running VERY slow

[BlueDolphins]

I have a I believe a '09 version pro. Running on snow leopard.

Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Version 10.6.8

It always ran great and never had a problem with speed. Up until about a month ago, I know this semester has been rough on it, I used to keep it at home, but now I have to lug it around everywhere. I keep it in a speck case and inside my backpack.

I do update it on schedule, I back it up to an external harddrive on occasion and haven't installed anything new in months.

Lately it runs VERY slowly usually freezing and programs fail to open. I downloaded a memory manager from the App store and I watch it drop to 2MB Free all the time, just simply by trying to load google. I only keep Firefox, mail and stickies open. Very rarely anything else. Sometimes pages.

Do I need to upgrade my memory or what? I am not very tech savy so not sure what I can do, people who work at the tech place at my school are trying to sell me a whole new mac saying mines shot but I don't think so either way I can't afford a new one.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

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Have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
Also check the "System Memory" tab to see what your "Page ins:", "Page outs:" and "Swap used:" are.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

Further reading:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
What Is Activity Monitor (or How to Take Your Mac's Pulse)​

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[Mersailios]

What are you seeing for page ins and page outs? How often do you restart your Mac?

 

[BlueDolphins]

What are you seeing for page ins and page outs? How often do you restart your Mac?

Pages in: 4.39 GB
Pages out: 4.23 GB

I honestly don't ever turn my computer on or off. According to the system profiler its been 7 days since I've turned it off. Could that be a potential issue?

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I noticed that my chart is 3/4 red&yellow. According to one site I saw it said that being true that I'm running out of ram and need to upgrade it. Would that help any. I only have a 250GB Harddrive and 180GB free.

 

[Mersailios]

That's a fair amount of page in/outs, indicating that your MacBook Pro is swapping information from its memory (or RAM) to a virtual memory file located on the hard disk; this swapping of data can cause the sort of issue that you're seeing.

2 GB of memory isn't necessarily bad but I certainly do think that an upgrade to 4 GB would be beneficial and improve the overall performance of your computer, this is especially true if you plan on upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 at any point in the future. In terms of hard disk space, you've got tons left so there's really no need to worry about that.

You could always create a new user account and see how your computer performs while being logged into that account, it's always possible that there could be a damaged preference file or cache issue contributing to this.