Getting Sluggish

I purchased a MacBook (Intel Duo Core 2.0 Ghz) back in July. Since purchasing it I can't help noticing that the computer is running considerably more sluggish. I have 33 GB of free hard disk space and aren't running too many resource hungry programs (programs I use are Mail, iCal, iPhoto, iWeb, GarageBand, Sibelius, iTunes, PhotoBooth, Dashboard, Pages, MS Word, MS Excel, Keynote, Firefox) and I can't help notice over the past few weeks the computer seems to be running considerably slower than usual. Is it perhaps the new OS? Are there any tips someone can give me to speed up this computer and make it a little snappier again?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
--AB

There's a free program you can download called Onyx which is wonderful for cleaning up and maintaining your system. You can find it at http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html
I've found that iPhoto can suck up my resources pretty quickly, and the MS Office programs always tend to open and close much more slowly than the others (probably because they aren't Universal). Periodically repairing permissions, emptying the trash, and clearing out various caches seems to help. (You don't really need Onyx to do that, but it organizes all of the various maintenance tasks into a very simple to use package that you can run when you want to. Obviously you'd want to familiarize yourself with what each of the tasks does before tinkering too much.)

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