If the videos are just sitting on his desktop they are not slowing anything down, unless he has so little free space on his hard drive that it cannot swap/work properly. OSX supposedly automatically defragments for files < 20 MB, but if he has a lot of big (video) files, there may be some benefit to defragmenting the drive. But since he should not try that until he has his data backed up, then the copying to DVD or external drive is part of that package. And if he has copies he may as well delete unnecessary files from his computer drive. 

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57408131-285/five-tips-for-cleaning-and-speeding-up-your-mac/


The best shot at improving his speed significantly is to add memory. Even for an apple that should not cost too much.

If he has the latest updates installed, your friend has his answer there - OSX 10.6.8 and later require 2 GB of RAM.

How many times must Alan Parson say it? RAM is everything!! :P

Anyway, unless he is running out of HD space - which of course might affect performance, I don't see how those movie files could affect performance.

Other than that, the basic maintenance can't be bad - verify/repair disk and verify/repair permissions.
Defragmenting on Mac isn't really as crucial as it can be on the PC. But ultimately, considering that it's an older machine and that it's been in use for quite some time, it might help a bit.


For DVD burning, Roxio Toast is probably one of the most common. However, from my personal experience, even though I rarely need to burn DVDs, the default Mac DVD software works just fine.

But unless he adds some RAM, I doubt that anything could really help much.

Thanks slartabart and Rain!!

I'll definitely recommend those things to him.....or just tell him AP was right!!