Hey Mac,
Some questions for you to consider about how your computer is behaving:
1) How much time does it take for the computer to start up, shut down, and sleep?
2) How much time does it take to open an application? Most applications should be ready within a few seconds, though larger stuff (such as the Adobe Suite) will take longer. Microsoft Office tends to open slowly as well.
And some health suggestions for your computer:
1) SMART Utility will check the physical health of the drive. Anything other than "Passed" means your hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced:
http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php
2) Take a look at Activity Monitor (it's in Applications>Utilities). Click on the *System Memory* tab and look at the pie there, and also look at the information on the left-hand side. Also look at the line labeled
Pageouts . It would be best if you restart your computer & then monitor the RAM usage on your computer. If you are seeing a high number of pageouts after going about your activities for the day, you definitely need more RAM. If not, you don't
need it, but more RAM is almost always better.
3) Check for directory corruption. Again, this won't hurt anything and gives you the assurance that your computer is in good condition. Open Disk Utility (Applications>Utilities), click on *Macintosh HD* in the upper left-hand corner, then click the *Verify Disk* button. On my machine, Disk Utility tends to look like it's not responding, so my advice would be to click the button, then leave your computer alone for about 5 minutes (go have some coffee!) or, at the very least, leave the Disk Utility window alone.
Once the verify is complete, you should see "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK" in green text. If not, please post what Disk Utility is unable to repair & we'll let you know how to proceed.
As for where/how to get more RAM, I personally buy RAM made by Crucial. However, many users (including myself) will suggest OWC as an excellent alternative. I'm told(as I have no direct experience myself) that they have great customer service and offer lifetime warranties on many of their products.
You don't need to partition your drive unless you're planning to install a second operating system. Partitioning the drive really doesn't offer much benefit for OS X. In some cases, partitioning the drive may slow the computer down!
Sorry for being long-winded (again!), but hopefully some of this will help!
~Lyssa