If a Mac browser crashes, or hangs with a spinning pizza of death, it’s almost certain that Adobe Flash, a “method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages”, is the cause.

Dana’s Mac laptop has been running slower-and-slower. Mine too, after 18 months, though I’ve taken many steps to try to speed it up.

Here’s the BEST thing I’ve done, so far, to improve speed and stability.

I installed ClickToFlash , the Flash-blocking plug-in for Safari on Mac OS X.

Works perfectly.

Instead of some distracting animated ads, I get this …

If I really want to see something, the flash video centre screen for example, I click and it will load.

LOVE this feature.

For Windows use the FlashBlock Firefox add-on.

Leave a comment if you’ve any other advice on speeding up the computer experience.

=== Steve Jobs is on a personal mission to KILL Flash, Apple not supporting Flash on either the iPhone nor iPad.

But rumours of the death of Flash are premature. It will be around for a while, yet.

This is a great compromise.