Disabled Java - Mountain Lion not sluggish now

[jacg]

I was getting a lot of spinning beach balls in Aperture and generally clunky transitions when moving between spaces. Switching between apps was unusually slow, even for a HDD MBP (8GB RAM). I kept an eye on Activity Monitor but no sign of major culprits, apart from 17 GB Pageins v 8 GB pageouts in 24 hours.

Anyway, I noticed a flash of a spinning blue beach ball so I went to Safari Prefs and disabled Java. No restart required, everything just seems smoother now.

Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by jacg

Anyway, I noticed a flash of a spinning blue beach ball so I went to Safari Prefs and disabled Java. No restart required, everything just seems smoother now.

Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.

Disabling Java in Safari is highly recommended for safe computing, as well. You should enable it only when on a trusted site that requires it.

[johndoejohndoes]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

Disabling Java in Safari is highly recommended for safe computing, as well. You should enable it only when on a trusted site that requires it.

Which one do you recommend be disabled? Javascript or Java?

Does this look right?

[justperry]

Originally Posted by johndoejohndoes

Which one do you recommend be disabled? Javascript or Java?

Does this look right?

Java is NOT Javascript, the only thing they have in common is the name, your settings are OK, leave Javascript enabled.

[walkie]

Originally Posted by johndoejohndoes

Which one do you recommend be disabled? Javascript or Java?

Does this look right?

If you disable JavaScript most web pages won't work!, disable only Java.

[benwiggy]

Originally Posted by jacg

Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.

In itself, there is is nothing about Java that should cause your machine to slow down.
It is possible that you had some app or process that did require Java, which went went mad and started eating up CPU and memory resources. Though conceivably a process that did not use Java could do that.

Merely killing the rogue process should be good enough.

Java has got some bad press recently -- deservedly so -- but there's is nothing wrong with having a Java installation on your Mac.
Disabling it in the browser is all you need to do.

[jacg]

Scrolling quickly through RAW files in Aperture still eventually slows down my MBP, now with 16 GB RAM (go a bit slower and it seems to be fine). But nothing like the slow down I was getting when I had Java enabled. I guess a more scientific test would be to turn it back on...

I noticed that Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 has a blue spinning stall cursor, of a different design though. It behaves like the whole app is written in Java and looks like it is running on Windows 95. I guess that's why I avoid it at all costs.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by jacg

Scrolling quickly through RAW files in Aperture still eventually slows down my MBP, now with 16 GB RAM (go a bit slower and it seems to be fine). But nothing like the slow down I was getting when I had Java enabled. I guess a more scientific test would be to turn it back on...

...

What is your hard drive capacity and how much of it is free?

[jacg]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

What is your hard drive capacity and how much of it is free?

750 GB capacity, 55 GB free.

Try quite hard not to let it drop below 50 GB.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by jacg

750 GB capacity, 55 GB free.

...

This is your problem. You are way under the 10% free capacity threshold. Archive at least 25 GB of your files to raise your hard drive free capacity to at least 75 GB.

[jacg]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

This is your problem. You are way under the 10% free capacity threshold. Archive at least 25 GB of your files to raise your hard drive free capacity to at least 75 GB.

Thanks for the advice. I will get archiving!