So, you’ve been using your Mac for awhile now, and things aren’t quite as responsive as they once were. That is totally normal, sadly. That said, there is an easy trick that you can do that can help speed up your machine substantially.
In System Preferences, go to the Accounts pane. Now, go to the Login Items tab. Look over what is on the auto-launch list. There might be some stuff that you want to leave alone. For example, iTunesHelper and SpeechSynthesisServer. That doesn’t mean you can’t start tossing out third party apps that you don’t need to auto-launch every time you log into your account. Trimming out a couple apps here and there will make your start-up time much shorter, and will probably help out in overall performance as well.
Photo Credit: mikel_duke