powerbook 12" final rev problems

ok...I really wanted to just hold out until santa rosa comes out and splurge on that..but I need a computer until then and my current powerbook 12" just isn't cutting it anymore. I get the spinning beachball all the time and I can't have everything I need open without everything grinding to a halt. I have 768 ram and as noted above, the 1.5 ghz 12" powerbook. I can think of two things I can do, I can clear it off and reinstall the OS, etc. Or, I can get a 1 gig stick of ram to make it 1.25 gig. Or..I can do both. Yes, I run onyx all the time and yes..permissions repaired, reset pram, etc etc. Any ideas? Thanks.


edit: general usage = mail, ical, schoolhouse (task management program), virtuedesktops, itunes, word, firefox, quicksilver, adium, skype open all at once on a regular basis

nazmac21 said:

Reset PRAM, add 1.25 Gigs and reinstall (erase and install) Mac OS X. Update to Mac OS 10.4.9 (When Released) and Repair Permissions.

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I've reset the pram already and it didn't seem to help any

also, to clarify, i would be moving from 768->1.25 gig

basically..i guess what i'm asking is if my comp could handle the workload after I do all this or will it still be unsatisfactory? If it still won't handle it after all that I guess I should just suffer through it for a couple more months and leave it be

yeah that's what i'm thinking too atm

I'll prob go for the base mbp though because I do game occasionally on my windows box..so I could ditch the windows box and use it for everything

beefy23 said:

It should handle it well but you might also want to look at your workflow; if you're not receiving mail in real time, you could close Mail and open when needed. The same goes for some of the other programs which tend to hog memory eg if you don't need to look at the task scheduler in real time, you could close it. You could also keep the number of tabs open in ff to a minimum etc

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well..that's true and i've thought about that..but the total ram of mail, schoolhouse, and ical is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 megs of ram...shouldn't be an issue. Also, the reason i do keep them open is because it takes maybe 10 seconds to load each one..and that can get painful. For mail especially..i need that open all the time so i get my mail live.

Also, I do a lot of research so I can have 30 tabs open and half a dozen pdfs =\

mikes63737 said:

That's alot to have open on that system. Why do you need Word open all of the time? I understand most of the other ones, but you shouldn't need Word all of the time.

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its not open all the time..but i mean I do type up a lot of stuff so i put it in there. Its open to some document probably 3/4 of the time my comp is on =\

Stinkythe1 said:

That could also slow it down.

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is it really? I guess i could close that...though it is nice =\ I never heard of it being a resource hog. Do you have any more info on virtuedesktops? thanks.

i know i'm spamming this thread =\..but any good deals on 12" pb ram you guys know of? thanks.

PeteDaBeat said:

i know they're selling them for $79.99 @ Fry's.

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really? just looked..the lowest i see for 1 gig is 99

http://shop4.outpost.com/search?cat=-49030&pType=pDisplay

whats the link to the 80$ ram? thanks.

idk i hope so..i put down 100$ for a gig stick an hour ago..that and i'll format and reinstall osx and see if that helps.

just an update..i got the ram and put it in. I'm up to 1.25 gig ram now. Huge improvement. Still probably going to go for the next revision of the mbp..but it will be a lot easier wait now. What was happening before I think is that I would run out of ram and it would just cache everything to the hd and go slow. I'd routinely get a 1:1 ratio of pageins to pageouts. I just opened a bunch of stuff and still have 0 pageouts . Good stuff. Thanks all.