Had the same issue on my work netbook, it was getting slower. Then I "cleaned up" Xfce, removed a huge desktop background image, switched to a lighter window de

Had the same issue on my work netbook, it was getting slower. Then I "cleaned up" Xfce, removed a huge desktop background image, switched to a lighter window decoration and button theme, and that helped a lot. Not Xfce it is fast again. Just saying, sometimes its not the software but the layout/theme that fills up the memory (at least on my small 1GB netbook).