How do i prevent my mac from freezing.

Cityacademy, I can't help you with your Mac freezing, WELCOME to A2K. This is the first time I've heard of any problems with a Mac.

Don't leave it outside in the winter. My Mac never freezes because I live in a warm climate.

Nick, Never thought of that one! LOL

That happened to me a few times. I'm no expert, but I keep my desktop fairly clear, filing stuff away, and I clear cache and history routinely. May be coincidence that I haven't dealt with it since.

I wouldn't mind being able to find out if I am challenging memory constraints though; the info I find is rather uninformative, she says, as she piles up photos...

Most commonly, freezes of the sort you report trace to resource issues, typically insufficient RAM, too many applications running, low hard drive disk space, or some combination of those. Corrupt or outdated drivers, missing or incorrectly installed updates, 3rd-party software conflicts with your operating system, faulty peripherals and, believe it or not, too many peripherals connected, whether in use or not, all can bring about freezes.

Adding more RAM is generally a good problem solver - if that's an option for you, do it. For other ideas, I suggest you clear all your caches and clean up your hard drive - get rid of or store to external drive or removable media anything that doesn't need to be on your operating drive, make sure all of your operating system, software, and drivers are the latest available for your configuration, and then always disconnect any unneeded peripherals and quit all unrelated/unneeded applications before trying to watch videos or perform other resource-intensive tasks.

A useful general troubleshooting tip site for Mac OS10.x may be found HERE

A decent general troubleshooting tip site for older Macs may be found HERE; though aimed at OS 8/9, most of it is applicable to OS10 as well.

Thanks, Timber..

Try resetting the PRAM

1.)Shut down the computer.
2.)Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3.)Turn on the computer.
4.)Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5.)Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6.)Release the keys.

Hold down the Ctrl, Alt, and caps locks keys while pressing the F1, F6, esc, F12, d, p, q, and m keys simultaneously. This may require several people.