There are many reasons why your MacBook might be slow. Many of them have to do with how your computer's being used. One good way is upgrade your RAM. OSX uses up a 512 RAM nicely; if you're running several other tools, you might need a 1 or 2 GB RAM, perhaps more. However, before you invest in a RAM upgrade, read the following best practices to increase your MacBook's speed:

Close unused applications: MacBooks need nearly 512 MB of RAM for the smooth operation of OSX alone. Additional applications running simultaneously will bring the performance down, even if you have a 2 GB RAM.

Restart your computer at regular intervals: Sometimes a simple restart will solve most performance issues.

Clean out Startup Items: Navigate to Apple Menu - System Preferences - Accounts - Login Items and remove any applications that you don't need at startup. Note: Make sure you do not delete anything that is critical to your MacBook's performance.

Update your System Preferences setup: If you don't use tools such as Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing regularly, keep them turned off until you need them again. You can do this from your System Preferences window. Turning off unused applications saves a lot of RAM.

Update your Other System Preferences: In the bottom pane of your System Preferences window, you will see some general preferences that are labeled Other. If you notice any preferences that you don't care for, or that you use occasionally, disable it, or remove the preference from the /Library/PreferencePanes folder.

Evaluate if you have the latest software: You might be using an Intel Mac, but some of your software may be running under the Rosetta translator. Rosetta allows applications that were originally built for a PowerPC processor to run on an Intel chip. If you must use Rosetta, make sure that the applications that are running under this platform are upgraded to the latest available patch. Try App Update widget will help with this.

Clean out irrelevant code: Most softwares are both PowerPC and Intel friendly. To optimize your MacBook to utilize the processor speed efficiently, use a utility like XSlimmer or Monolingual strip out unnecessary code in your software. This action gains you double benefits; applications run faster, and disk space is saved.

Note: If you're currently using a PowerPC Mac and you anticipate a possible migration to Intel, you might want to defer running XSlimmer until you've made the transition. If not, all the programs that you slimmed for PowerPC will be running under Rosetta on your Intel Mac, unless install the applications again.

Remove unused languages and translations: Your MacBook comes with multi-lingo localization options. However, you might not be using all of them. Use Monolingual to remove the language option for the languages you will not need. Important note: Monolingual will also remove any unnecessary architecture from your system, while keeping your applications safe.

Keep your MacBook cool: Make sure your MacBook's fan does not very hot. Your MacBook will slow down when the processor heats up. The Fan Control utility allows you to change the threshold for turning the MacBook's fan on and off. With a cool processor, you can maximize performance, though this might shorten your battery's life a bit.

Do you need all those Widgets? Evaluate the widgets on your Mac OS X 10.4.x Dashboard and disable the ones that you do not need; you will save both your RAM and your processor energy by doing this.

Use Apple's Activity Monitor to optimize processor power: By using this tool, you can monitor CPU usage, RAM requirements, virtual memory usage, and see if an application is a PowerPC or Intel (Universal) build.

Clean your hard disk: Doing this will enhance your MacBook's performance greatly.

Run repair tools on your hard disk: OnyX, Cocktail and TinkerTool are good options for this task. Run both the maintenance and the cleaning options in OnyX and also set up scheduled routines

Buying a new machine will cost a lot of money and will take time and more money to set up. Perform the optimization tasks outlined in this article and your MacBook might just perform like a brand new machine.

Larry Camacho is an article author for various resources such as Mac-How.Net. Larry Camacho knows how to deal with the "MacBook running slow" issues!

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Here's another good reason to invest in an external backup drive and set up your backup strategy immediately: Time Machine can serve as an excellent troubleshooting device.

Back in the OS 9 days, there was a third-party software program called Rewind. It kept an incremental backup of your Mac so that, if anything went wrong, you could revert your operating system to the point in time just before the problem cropped up.

Even though OS X is much more reliable than OS 9, it is still not perfect, nor is the world in which we live. Mac OS X can still be corrupted in little ways, by power failures or by application installations that conflict with each other.

Imagine the productivity boost if, instead of spending countless hours troubleshooting minor system problems, you could simply revert your Mac back to the way it was before the trouble occurred! This would make the Mac's legendary ease-of-use even greater. You can with Apple's Time Machine.

Time is very precious to anyone in business and the less time you need to spend troubleshooting, the more time you can devote to making money.

To make Time Machine work in the most efficient way for you you will of course need an external backup drive, and it is best to haveone that is considerably larger than the contents of your Mac's internal hard drive. This is because Time Machine makes incremental backups.

What this means is that it backs up not only the current state of your Mac but the older files you have created and since deleted, changed, or otherwise modified. That way, you can revert any folder or document to the way it was previously, in case you change your mind or inadvertently throw something away.

One excellent such drive is made by Apple. It's called Time Capsule, and it is designed especially to work with Time Machine. Time Capsule incorporates, at the time of this writing, a wireless 1TB or 2TB hard drive, and it is specifically designed to work with Time Machine in Mac OS X leopard or Snow Leopard. After the initial backup, it updates itself with changed files automatically and wirelessly in the background, so you never need to worry about backing up again.

If you have multiple Leopard or Snow Leopard Macs, say a desktop in one room and a laptop MacBook that you carry with you, Time Capsule can back up and store files for each one. No more bother connecting a backup drive to each machine. Time Capsule can do it all.

Whatever you do, institute a regular backup program for your Mac today!

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