Gadgetory

once your Mac isn't quite so new anymore you might start to notice it slowing down to a crawl applications take too long to load and even doing simple things like saving files can take forever but before you go out and buy a new computer here are five ways to clean and speed up your Mac first if your computer is slow to boot up it's probably because it's trying to launch a bunch of applications at the same time to fix this all you need to do is disable some of those startup items so go to System Preferences then to users and groups and then click on the login items tab to see a list of the apps that open when you boot up your Mac remove any apps that you don't need at startup another big problem is getting major slow down when you're using more than a couple applications for most apps your computer should be able to handle this without a problem but if an app is taking up too many active resources it could wreak havoc on your system so open the Activity Monitor the numbers here are constantly going up and down showing you the amount of CPU and memory resources each app is using so if you see an app is taking up too many resources it might be time to look for a replacement or if you absolutely need that app consider using it without any additional apps running at the same time another culprit might be your hard drive if it's getting too close to its storage limit in this case use an app like Omni disk sweeper or disk inventory X to find out what's taking up space on your drive and delete any big storage hogs if you can at this point you should also use the built-in Disk Utility to fix any issues there might be with your hard drives directory the directory is like a road map your computer uses to retrieve files and if that's out of order it can cause your Mac to slow down so head to the Disk Utility and choose your hard drive from the left panel make sure you're viewing the first aid tab and then click the repair disk button in the lower right corner if you did all of these things and your Mac's still won't perk up you might need to more RAM you can get eight gigs for about $50 which is a whole lot cheaper than buying a new computer check out cnn.com for the guide to doing it yourself and finally always keep your operating system current it's free and the new systems often include improvements I can speed up your computer light compressed memory in OS 10 mavericks with these tips in place you should see a huge improvement in your max performance and you can get the detailed guide at scene accom slash how-to for CNET I'm Sharon Profis