So I've converted....

Ive made the switch from PC to Mac less than a month ago and have no regrets. Though i'm still getting used to everything in my new MacBook Pro C2D 2.16Ghz that I purchased, I must say that I love it. But I have a concern...as a college student, I am by no means wealthy (purchased laptop on layaway). I went to the local computer store today and noticed that the same model and make of my laptop on display was performing faster than my own MacBook Pro. It irks me because absolutely nothing was different about it (specs) yet my laptop experiences some lag. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I want to make sure that my laptop is performing up to par and that everything is functioning normally, especially since I invested $2000+ on it.

Is there anyway to check on the performance of my computer to make sure of this? Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks!

welcome aboard andrewc! congrats on the new MBP!

your issue may just be junk left over from the install, or various other little things you may want to check.

first, download either of these:
onyx - excellent maintenance tool, great for cache maintenance and tweaking preferences. free!

mainmenu - alternative to onyx, not quite as fully featured, but easier to use, and a bit less dangerous.

and run the cache and log cleaning.

then, make sure you don't have too many folders on your desktop. as i understand it, every folder acts as though it is an open finder window, and that will eat up resources. keep those folders to a minimum. i keep all my extra stuff in my home folder (downloads, stuff to archive, etc) in sub folders.

those are the quick and easy ones. there are lots of other tweaks you can seach for here, and i'm sure others will speak up and offer some help too.

good luck!

It's more than likely the number of programs installed and running that was the difference. I had an iMac before I bought my MBP and in the beginning it ran amazingly fast, after a few months it was running slow again and after deleting all my pictures and clearing out a bit of my music it was running quick again. Just do a little spring cleaning and you should be fine. If it still continues to lag you might want to investigate a bit closer.