Macbook Pro 13 inch early 2011 running slow

Question

Hi, I've had my Macbook Pro (13", early 2011) for about three years now and it has been very well behaved up until now. It has 4GB of ram and is the basic model of its kind. I recently upgraded the operating system to Mavericks but I noticed it was being slow even before the upgrade. I have everything backed up on an external hard drive through time machine so data loss isn't a worry.
I have noticed that opening applications such as Mail, Word, Google Chrome, iCal, Spotify and iPhoto have become increasingly slow and browsing the internet (youtube, tumblr, etc) is similarly slow with content and sound lagging. I wonder if I should buy and install more ram? Or is it a problem with the hard drive? On average how long would a macbook pro of this age last?
Any help would be much appreciated!
PS- I'm sorry if this topic has been posted other times!

Answer 1

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take one of the actions that you're having trouble with. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.