MBP 2008 is running very sluggish

Question

It seems every day I am having to restart my MBP at least 2 times a day. I am a web designer so I am running Dreamweaver and Photoshop daily. I have upgraded my ram and it still runs this way.
Here are the spec.
Processor - 2.6GHz incore 2 Duo
Memory - 6BG 667 MHz
Software OS X 10.8.3
I just restared it about 6 hrs ago and this is what it is showing in the activinty monitor.
VM size - 244.71 GB
Page ins - 1.33gb
Page outs 240.7mb  (It is usually at least 1gb)
Swap Used - 1.35gb
Is there anything I can do to get this thing going good again? When I run Final Cut Pro it seems to just lag out.
I need to do something to get this running smooth again because it is messing up me being productive.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Your problem is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.
That can happen for two reasons:
You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.
Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination. In Activity Monitor, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the  Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
from the menu bar.
If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.
The process named "WebProcess" renders web pages for Safari and other applications. It uses a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed.
If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command: 
sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details:
Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System