MacBook running slow

The fact your only running on 512 memory might have something to do with it. Even if you upp'd it to 1gb you'd find things working much more smoothly. The OS uses a lot of memory to run.

Rosetta Apps + 512 RAM = no good.

excuse my ignorance - what are rosetta apps?
my macbook has 512 as well and is pretty slow - slower even than my emac 1.25 g4 with 512 ram

i dont understand why...

Make sure your Photoshop application is up to date as well. When I first ran MS Office 2004 on my MBP the program was so slow as to be nearly unsuable. Updating Office did the trick. It seems that MS did some rosetta optimization and it helped a lot.

From wikipedia:

Rosetta is a lightweight dynamic translator for Mac OS X distributed by Apple. It enables applications compiled for the PowerPC family of processors to run on Apple systems that use Intel processors. It is based on Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit technology. It is a key part of Apple's strategy for the transition of their Macintosh line from PowerPC to Intel processors, enabling pre-existing Mac OS X software to run on the new platform without modification. The name is a reference to the Rosetta stone, whose discovery made it possible to comprehend and translate Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Rosetta is an application that runs in the background of mac OS X on intel macs when you open an application which is not optimised (universal binary) for the intel processor.

It uses 512mb up itself nearly and hence running programs like office and photoshop or any other non universal apps - means your mac is very under - nourished in the ram department as rosetta is sucking it all up and not leaving enough left for your other apps & the operating system to run smoothly.

You need to upgrade to at least 1gb. You will see a huge difference over 512mb.

Are you having troubles opening up files on your computer or just photoshop?

If you have done the firmware update, than it may help you to run disk utility and repair permissions. If you don't have disk utility in your applications folder, put your OSX intall disk in but don't install...when you get the top menu, Disk Utility is under one of those menus....once disk utility comes up, select the Macintosh HD and select "Repair Permissions". See if that doesn't improve it a little bit.

Slow core 2 duo

My Macbook has been running extremely slow for no reason. Even with a few backround apps running, safari and other intel apps run slowly. Rosetta apps also run slow, but that is understandable. Does anyone have an idea/solution to this problem.

Macbook-
Core 2 Duo - 1.83 Ghz
512 MB RAM
60 GB HD

Get more ram, all of you.

512 simply doesn't cut it anymore with today's applications and OS. I'm sorry but you'll have to fork out the 40 or 50 bucks for some more. I'm sure it will fix your problems up real nice.

I have 1GB ram and mine runs very slow as wel (Entourage, Excel, Firefox)l. Would bumping it to 2GB make a big difference?

Get the Intel version of Firefox. About Entourage, no idea what it is. Check if an intel version exists, about Excel, well if you decide to use an m$ app, deal with it. I prefer OOo, besides is not as "good", whatever that means.

Jumping from 1 to 1.5 is much less expensive than to 2, if such config is supported.

My 1.83GHz 512MB MacBook runs like a charm. I tend to have a few Camino windows open, Microsoft Messenger and iTunes all open.

Rarely see the beachball.

3 words - GET MORE RAM

Trust me. Im so happy over my macbook now.

IMHO, Apple should have never sold a computer that runs Rosetta with 512MB of RAM. All their display models, even before the jump to 1 GIG standard in all but one laptop model, had at least 1GIG of RAM installed. I think they realized that to display one with 512MB RAM would be am embarrassment.

It's not the RAM

My MacBook Pro has been slowing down as well. It's 2.33GHz model with 3GB of RAM. I've cleared all caches, optimized the HDD, rebuilt the directories, all the usual stuff and it still runs slowly. We're talkin' click... action. That slow. It reminds me of Windoze PC loaded down with spyware.

MacinTek said:

My MacBook Pro has been slowing down as well. It's 2.33GHz model with 3GB of RAM. I've cleared all caches, optimized the HDD, rebuilt the directories, all the usual stuff and it still runs slowly. We're talkin' click... action. That slow. It reminds me of Windoze PC loaded down with spyware.

Click to expand...

for the OP and the macbook owners, it seems it is the RAM. for you on the other hand, it must be something slowing down your machine, you should start 'activity monitor' and see whats using your ram and processor cycles. many widgets? many startup items? amy hack istalled?

Ale-500 said:

Get the Intel version of Firefox. About Entourage, no idea what it is. Check if an intel version exists, about Excel, well if you decide to use an m$ app, deal with it. I prefer OOo, besides is not as "good", whatever that means.

Click to expand...

This is Microsoft Entourage

OOo needs the horrible X11 (at least for the next few months), I recommend NeoOffice highly

Macbook Pro running slow

I just replaced my 2.33 Ghz intel core duo 2g 1067 Mhz DDR2 macbook with a 2.8ghz intel core duo 4g 1067 Mhz DDR3 macbook. Every time I am using iChat or Safari and I open another program like World of Warcraft or iTunes, the iChat and Safari come almost to a stop. I type and it takes 30 seconds for the first letter of what I typed to come through. It took a total of 5 minutes to type, "Macbook Pro running slow" in google" and all I had open was safari and WoW. I understand WoW is a taxing program, but my old computer ran it jut fine with iTunes, Safari, and iChat all open at once. I just got this computer maybe a week ago. Any suggestions?