To use a car analogy, your processor operates in various 'gears', depending on the workload of your system. You can manually put your processor into 'top gear', and your computer performs heavy tasks faster. To do this, right*click the top panel, and select Add to Panel. From the list of applets, select and add the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor applet.

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Right-click the applet and choose Preferences. Choose which processor or core (listed as CPUO and CPU1 on a dual*core system, for example) you wish the applet to monitor.
For multi-core/multi-processor systems, you should add one applet per core to the panel, and choose the relevant CPU in each applet's Preferences.

You can change the processor/core speed by clicking the applet. You can choose Performance when doing 'heavy' tasks like watching videos or copying big files. Geeky fun! However, this could consume more power, and heat up the processor (reducing battery life, and the overall life of your system). A good choice is Ondemand, which lets Linux auto-boost your CPU speed when it needs more processing power, and drop back to minimum speed aftelWards-a good balance between performance and power*saving, extending the battery life and cool running.