direct connect crashes panther

[ctt209]

hey guys!

I just switched today and bought a 12" powerbook. the weird thing is that several times today, if i have some apps running, say safari for example, and then click on direct connect, it would take 10 minutes for the thing to load! In the mean time, i am forced to entertain myself with the spinning circle of color. And sometimes it would freeze up the OS and I;d have to manually shut it down. Since i'm new to the whole mac experience I was just wondering if this is a common problem, or if there was something wrong with my powerbook specifically. It's really bugging me that panther crashes so easily, since i decided on the mac for its reknowned stability.

fyi, i have 256 mb of ram, if that's the reason for the freezes.

thanks in advance,
tony

[yoda13]

you definately should upgrade the ram as OS X needs as much ram as you feel like you can throw at it. However, that being said, you machine should not be crashing to the point of needing a restart or anything like that. More RAM will reduce appearances of the spinning beachball, but you whole system should not crash. Maybe some one can provide a specific answer on that front. Unfortunately, I am out of ideas.