MacBook Pro Obscenely Slow

deus_ex_machina said:

Mac OS X: About the Archive and Install feature

This goes into detail for you. It's a quick and dirty way of getting system files back in line.

If the OS is still slow after that, backup and do Erase and Install, which wipes all.

Click to expand...

So it seems Snow Leopard does that automatically. I'm nervous to wipe everything and reinstall. Seems like a huge pain for something that I'm not sure will fix my problem.

My stupid machine takes 5+ minutes to boot, and things are getting worse.

juice said:

So it seems Snow Leopard does that automatically. I'm nervous to wipe everything and reinstall. Seems like a huge pain for something that I'm not sure will fix my problem.

My stupid machine takes 5+ minutes to boot, and things are getting worse.

Click to expand...

I don't understand where you got the impression that SL does this.

Have you already tried creating a new account and see if the problems persist?

That's the step to try before going system-wide.

Create a new admin account, delete your account (saving it as an image to the Deleted Users folder) and login as the new one.

If that's doesn't work, back it all up and erase. It's not as daunting as it seems.

Obscenely Slow

Hi Juice, I am new to Mac and have a similar problem. I have a 13inch MacBook Pro with about 10GB free space.

What I just did was delete the last program I installed, which made my Mac a lot slower. After that program (abt 150MB) was uninstalled, the speed Mac increased significantly. I guess some RAM and other memory was being used as this program was installed.
I also deleted alot of my Podcasts on iTunes as this ate up so much HD space.

In order to help solve my, and maybe your problem, can someone guide us wtih the following:
1. How to edit my start up files (ie, which programs are on standby when I turn on my Mac)
2. How to back up, transfer my iPhotos onto a hard drive.
3. If I use Picassa along side iPhoto, does that double the HD space used up?

Thanks,
Servantjob