Hi all, forgive me if you know this already but I just learned a 
priceless Mac tip from our Computer Dude. Apparently anything and 
everything that is on your desktop is stored in RAM (Macs only, I 
think). Therefore, if you're like me and have a folder with seven years 
of work sitting on your desktop for easy access, you're inadvertently 
tying up all of your computer's RAM & slowing everything down. I 
discovered this b/c I was asking him about defragging since it has come 
up as a thread recently on this list. His suggestion to try clearing the 
desktop first.

Computer Dude suggests keeping all of the files you create in your 
"Documents" folder and then creating aliases to put on your desktop. He 
says to keep the files on your desktop under 500KB and your computer 
will run like the day it was born. I ran home and tried it on my ancient 
laptop and sure enough, programs that were painfully slow before are 
opening with lightning speed and zipping along happily. What a tip!

Hope that's enlightening to some of you. I feel like I just made a 
million bucks! (time is money, right?)
Kapi