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slow macbook but only sometimes!

A

AIR-S

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 2, 2010
7
0
Hi peeps!!

My other half bought a macbook about 7 or 8 months ago! and its been great!!

Up until recently when its started to slow down! it only does it occasionally but is fine otherwise! i have reset the pram and used onyx today so hopefully when she uses it tonight it may be better!

one question for you all tho!! for some reason the tesco direct site pretty much makes it freeze! i have opened it on my air and it runs fine!

As soon as the first page has loaded we can click on something else and it just freezes to the point where you cant even close safari!!

I have opened Istat and watched the ram and it goes from well over 1gb free to below 100mb free!! so can anyone help??? as i said i have loaded exactly the same page on my macbook air and it runs fine!!

If anyone could help that would be great as its really bugging her now!!

Also im not sure if there are any other sites that do it but this is the one she mentioned and is the worst!!

Thanks

Rich

P.s not sure of exact specs but off the top of my head its a 2.13ghz 2gb ram and 250gb hdd.... i think lol
 
Safari is a bit of a RAM hog, if its jumping between 1GB and 100MB free its probably due to memory being written to disc.

In iStat check your RAM page outs, if they are high i'd advise looking into getting more.
 
Paulywauly said:
Safari is a bit of a RAM hog, if its jumping between 1GB and 100MB free its probably due to memory being written to disc.

In iStat check your RAM page outs, if they are high i'd advise looking into getting more.
Click to expand...


Ok thanks for your reply!! Will check the ram page outs later!

When you say memory being wrote to disc what does it mean??
Bit of a noob when it comes to macs lol

Just seems strange that it uses sooo much ram just when you open tesco direct! But yet it's fine on my mac!!

Is there anything else I can do that might help speed it up??

Thanks for the answeres already!
Rich
 
When i refer to writing to disc i refer to your mac running on too little memory, when it doesnt have enough RAM to keep all of your applications open you are running it needs to move some over to your hard disc until its needed again. Because your hard disc is ALOT slower than the RAM you'll notice this as a big performance drop when it happens. This will also explain why its your free RAM is jumping between 1GB and 100MB free.

it looks like the laptop only has 2GB of RAM which isnt very much nowadays, especially when ive seen Safari use around 500-700MB of that!

It sounds like your other mac may have more RAM if you are not having issues with it which is good.

Only solution is to stick more RAM chips in it, luckily they aren't very expensive and easy to install for noobs :)
 
Paulywauly said:
When i refer to writing to disc i refer to your mac running on too little memory, when it doesnt have enough RAM to keep all of your applications open you are running it needs to move some over to your hard disc until its needed again. Because your hard disc is ALOT slower than the RAM you'll notice this as a big performance drop when it happens. This will also explain why its your free RAM is jumping between 1GB and 100MB free.

it looks like the laptop only has 2GB of RAM which isnt very much nowadays, especially when ive seen Safari use around 500-700MB of that!

It sounds like your other mac may have more RAM if you are not having issues with it which is good.

Only solution is to stick more RAM chips in it, luckily they aren't very expensive and easy to install for noobs :)
Click to expand...

ok cool thanks allot for your help!!

One last question lol what should i be looking for at the page in and outs??

Thanks again
Rich
 
well Page outs is basically just a measurement of the amount of memory taken from the RAM written to disk. its debatable exactly how many page outs actually constitutes to not having enough RAM, but the more of it there is the more its gonna have an effect. the size of your swap file is also an indicator.

ill give you an example, my iMac has 4gb of ram and at the minute im running Safari, Mail, Drobo Dasboard, and Word and a few menubar apps. Im running a 250mb swap file. 213,000 page ins and 3,900 page outs. This is fine.

On the other hand, i sometimes have the ALOT applications open at the same: Safari (loads of tabs!) Toast, Unison, Handbreak, iTunes, iPhoto, PS3 Media Server, Evernote, Skype, twitterific, Mail, Drobo Dashboard, unrarx, Carbon Copy Cloner. iStat Server etc. the swap file is sometimes nearly 4GB and the page outs are MASSIVE! i need more ram too!
 
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