Just bought a Macbook pro 17" 2.16 with 2gb ram and 500gb 5400 HD. IT RUNS VERY SLOW, even with fresh install of X 10.6, what do I do?

So I just bought a great condition Macbook pro 17" with 2gb of ram, and the last owner upgraded the HD to a 500gb toshiba 5400rpm HD....the computer is VERY slow....when loading up anything it take forever, and watching video's freezes it for a few seconds then starts for a 1-3 seconds then freezes again....what can I do? I really like the laptop, but hate the performance...and I don't want to go buy another one....but I have considered a SSD....any idea's before I do that?
Thanks.

How much hard drive space do you have left?
Sluggish Finder - Bunch of icons on your desktop?  An overcrowded desktop slows down your Mac.
Get rid of needless Finder calculations - Open a window in Finder/View/Show View Options:  ensure "Calculate All Sizes" option is unchecked.
Internet related - It's likely that your broadband connection is the bottleneck.  You can check your speed on http://www.speedtest.net to see how fast your connection is.  If your web browser specifically performs slowly, quit and relaunch it.
If browser remains sluggish, empty its cache.
Safari/Empty Cache
Firefox/Preferences - select the Network tab of the Advanced preferences and click the "Clear Now" button in the "Offline Storage" area.
Application related - Launch "Activity Monitor" - Applications/Utilities - click the CPU heading and see what float to the top.  If an application takes up a large chunk of CPU and won't let it go, it could be dragging down your Mac's performance.  Quit it by clicking the Quit Process button at the top of the Activity Monitor window.
Too little ram - max out your ram.

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