Hey, I brought this macbook pro about hmm 7 months ago maybe a little more (I'd have to look at the docket for the exact date) anyway, I've been a very happy switcher since, having lots of fun and just loving my baby..

HOWEVER...

in the last few weeks it seems to have slowed down and I'm getting the beach ball a LOT now, even just typing into the firefox search bar can sometimes be slow and give me that lil spinning ball of irritation, happens in finder too.

Everything used to be absolutely immediate (unless I had the computer under a lot of strain) but now even when its doing nothing its slower then it used to be

hmm I installed drive genius 2 and used the slimming tool to remove localisation files (I have a backup of them) and I used it to remove universal binaries too but I"m not totally sure it was that, since its only the last two days where its been irritating me the most before that I'd been using the notebook pretty hard for all manner of things so I just put it down to a lot of strain on the hardware but now I realise its not that..

Is there anything I can do to fix it? at about this time on my windows machine I used to just reinstall windows and I'd gotten it down to a fine art too (4 hours from start to finish) but I was told by a few mac users that wasn't needed..

So.. umm.. Help???

My iMac was really slow as of late so I re-built it on thursday.

My technique is to create a folder on Macintosh HD called Backup- John (replace john with your name) then place all of the data/apps you need on to that directory.

Throw in your leopard CD, reboot and hold down the C key. Your mac will now boot from the CD not the HD.

Wait a while, then you will be prompted to specify your language.
Accept the licence agreement etc.

***Before you install MAC OS X***

There will be a button labelled customize (click on that)

what ever you do make sure that you dont click on clean install, it will totally nuke the HD

Please check the boxes Archive and install
Please uncheck PReserve Applications and users (as that will ruin the purpose of this operation)

you are now ready to install mac os x. Go outside for a bit.

After that has completed, setup your accounts etc, install software, put the files in the backup folder where they were.
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I find with macs, you only really have to do this about once a year.
this two year old machine is like new again! after I ran this process

isn't that sorta like a time machine backup? I've got time machine running if that makes any difference?

you way seem... erm.. to be honest to this newbie in the mac.. scary.. is there anywhere I can read more about it? like specific instructions on how to backup app data