How do I figure out what is slowing down my Macbook Pro?

Open up Activity Monitor.

Applications >> Utilities >> Activity Monitor.app

(I keep it in my dock so that I can always refer to it quickly!)

iStat Pro is a great widget that monitors lots of things, from battery performance to CPU usage to ethernet spikes.

Maybe one of those rare Mac virus’?

Activity Monitor is a good idea, I have a widget I keep on the desktop that tells me in a basic way how much of what is being used.

It may be an over simplification but do you restart periodically? Mine will slow down noticeably if I haven’t done that for a while.

I also run disk repair utility every now and again, that seems to give it a kick.

My husband keeps so much junk on his desktop, his runs like a snail.

Having lots of files on your desktop, or anywhere on your drive, won’t slow you down (unless your drive is running out of free space.) Only open apps and files add to the system load. Activity monitor is a great way to see what is running, and if any processes have gone wild. Make sure you view “All Processes”, and click twice on %CPU to sort by CPU usage in descending order. If anything is running continuously at 40% or more, chances are it is either corrupted, buggy, or not compatible with your system. You can Quit the bad process (or Force Quit if necessary) from within Activity Monitor.

It might not be bad to run the maintenance scripts.

Applications/Terminal

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

Enter your password when prompted. Then wait. It could take a while. It should look similar the this when finished.

@johnpowell, how long should I expect running that to take?

And can I do other things while it’s running?

(Or should I start it at night before bed?)

Thanks!

About 20 minutes. You can do other stuff while it runs. Just keep the Terminal open.