Macbook incredibly slow sometimes

Question

Hello,
I'm using a macbook I've had for 3+ years. It's 2.16GZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB 667 MHz DDRS SDRAM.
Sometimes--once every few days, it runs unbearably slow, to the point of being unusable. For instance, it'll take 5 minutes or longer to open a word document, and the same amount of time once I've pressed "print" for the actual print box to pop up. During these times, the typing is also very slow--sometimes I wait upwards of a few minutes for text to pop up on the screen (and if I type more than a few letters at a time, nothing comes up). When this happens the fan usually runs on high. Even "at best" there's still a 5-10 second delay between, say, pressing the finder icon and the actual box popping up and displaying words.
I've already reinstalled the OS (Snow Leopard) (clean install) and had the main fan replaced (it was overheating). However, I'm still having the same problem. Apple didn't do anything about it when I sent it in, and I've been told that this is "normal." I have 120GBB hard drive, and recently wiped it as well, thinking that was the reason. I now have 80GB free, and am experiencing the same problem. I've also repaired disk permissions and run the install disks several times.
Typically, I run safari, word/powerpoint (sometimes both) and another small program or two.
Specs are below:
At best:
Free: 72.5
Wired; 182.5
Active: 547.9
Inactive: 221.3
Used: 950.8
VM Size: 117.7 GB
Page Ins: 290.3 mb
Page Outs: 23.9 mb
Swap used: 130.8 mb
At almost-worst (nearly frozen, taking between 30 seconds and 1 minute for text to show up after typing):
Free: 12.9 MB
Wired: 192.8 MB
Active: 544 MB
Inactive: 269.7 MB
UsedL 1008. 4 MB
VM Size: 124.36 GB
Page Ins: 1.13 GB
Page Outs: 603.3 MB
Swap Used: 1.46 GB
Thanks for your help in advance!

Answer 1

You need more RAM. Snow Leopard requires 1GB to run, and you'll want at least double that in order to have a reasonably good computing experience. More RAM would be even better.
You can go to crucial.com and use their memory scanner to determine the type of RAM you need. You can also go to OWC at http://www.macsales.com.
~Lyssa