How to speed up my MacBook?

2009 MacBook running OS X 10.7.5, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3. 92.13 GB free out of 499.25 GB.

Logging in takes a couple minutes, opening applications takes anywhere between 5-30 seconds. What can I do to speed it up just like when it was new?

I had a white MacBook with roughly the same specifics (except for a 160 GB HD) and it wouldn't run so slowly.

You can try the following software fixes:

1. Go to System Preferences -> Users and disable unnecessary login items. These items are executed right after login.
2. Go to /Library/StartupItems and disable unnecessary startup items. These items are executed before login, just after boot. This is safe because essential system scripts are not placed there. Don't touch anything in /System/Library, instead.
3. Use Activity Monitor and identify third-party daemons and processes that are running in background. Disable/uninstall unnecessary software.
4. Open Console and look for unusual error messages.
5. Clear ~/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches.
6. Check and — if needed – repair your hard drive. You can do this booting with Recovery HD.
7. Check and repair permissions with Disk Utility.
8. Go to Dashboard and close unnecessary widgets. Some widgets run in background and use system resources.
9. Only if you know what you're doing, you could also check third-party kernel extensions.

Hardware improvements:

1. Buy a SSD. The spinning hard drive is the greatest bottleneck in modern laptops.
2. If you're running short of RAM, consider upgrading to 8 GB if your machine supports it (4 GB should be enough, though).

Buy an SSD (solid state drive), it will speed things up considerably. You can install it yourself.

I would try a Repair Disk first. I have seen this drastically speed up slow Macs, and it's free before you spend money on hardware: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1782