Should I buy a new laptop? Or fix it with more RAM?

Dear all,
After a few years (since mid 2009) of happy relationship with my Macbook Pro, the last year I have noticed a severe decline in speed in all applications as well as a lot of apps crashing or not responding regulary. Me and my laptop have survived this long thanks to this forum where I am usually able to find solutions to various problems and by experimenting with  "home fixes", despite my lack of technical knowledge.
I live abroad in a country without access to proper computor service centers etc, however I am visiting Europe next week and I need to take the decision on whether it is worth fixing my laptop or if the best option sis just to buy a new one.
After my attempts to troubleshoot and after reading up on this forum I am suspecting that the cause of the problems might have something to do with RAM or the proccessor. I do run a lot of heavy apps such as photoshop, premier pro, indesign, firefox, lightroom etc. I have always been able to work efficiently while having several apps running at the same time (for example firefox, word, indesign and photoshop) however since a while back i can't run more than 1-2 apps at the same time without the computer crashing or getting paralysed. The beach ball is spinning for minutes after each click which is very frustrating when working with details in for example photoshop. I have tried to clean up the computor with Onyx a few weeks ago which I think improved it a little bit. My 500GB harddisk is less than half full.
I would really appreciate your advise on my options of fixing the issue or just buying a new computer. Below are some details about my laptop.
Millions of thanks in advance!
Best,
Hanna
Processor: 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB
Software: OSX Version 10.8.3

I think 8G of memory may be good enough to run Adobe suite and Office.
No, there is no such risk.
Following shop has memory you need, though if you think you couldn't hadle to upgrade RAM, take it to Apple Store's Genius Bar to ask about upgrading RAM.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3
-- kaz-k
PS/ You'd better ask about your question at MacBook Pro discussion board.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro

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