If you are feeling your Mac is running “slow” AND if you have Microsoft Office installed, then you can try removing Microsoft Office. I removed it (Microsoft Office) and my Mac got all its speed back. To confirm this, my other friends also noticed considerable speed improvement for Mac, when they removed Microsoft office.
Microsoft Office 2008
For Microsoft Office 2008, Microsoft provides a small tool called “Remove Office” under /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Additional Tools. At first, it may look like it does remove office completely as its name suggest but that is not true. You need to follow official 2008 uninstallation instructions posted by Microsoft here.
Microsoft Office 2011
For Office 2011, Microsoft doesn’t provide any “Remove Office” tools! You need to follow official 2011 uninstallation instructions posted by Microsoft here. I know instructions are quite lengthy and cumbersome for average users but that only official way.
(Unofficial) Uninstaller for Microsoft office 2011
Unofficially, you can use a third party tool I found here – http://www.fixkb.com/downloads?did=9 I found it after my job was done so I could not test it. But it seem to work as you can see from comments on this post.
Alternatives to Microsoft Office…
For Mac, there are many alternatives. I found all of them very disappointing to be honest.
Its not speed-issue only about Microsoft Office.They have many more issues so no votes for Microsoft Office anyway!
For word files, I use Mac’s “Preview” application as default application to “open” documents. 99% of the time I need to “read” only word files I come across.
If I need to “write”, I prefer Google Docs. In cases where I need to “edit” existing word files, I either upload them on Google Docs or open with them on LibreOffice. I use LibreOffice for opening Powerpoint as well as Excel files also.
Sometimes LibreOffice breaks formatting but this occasional breaking of formatting is better than using a slow Mac always! 🙂