Empting Trash crashes my macbook

Sounds as if you have trash set for 'secure empty'...this takes a l o n g time.

Go to Finder Preferences/Advanced and see if the' [?] Empty Trash securely' setting is enabled...if so, remove the check mark.

If you want something as gone as possible using routine tools, then a secure delete is for you.

If you're not dealing with state secrets on your home computer, then a normal delete will suffice.

It's all a matter of your personal security - the short story is that there is an index in your computer that points to a file (the file is bits and bytes of data) location'.

When you put something in the trash and do a 'normal' empty, the index pointer is cleared, but the data waits around until that 'space' is needed and then it will be overwritten. It isn't that hard to recreate the pointer and read the data, since it is still there, unless of course it has coincidentally overwritten.

A 'secure delete' actually writes over the old data...making it go pretty much bye-bye for all but the most intrepid forensics teams.