A Little Confused

[JSENNY25]

Hi folks.

Just to give you a bit of a point of reference:

-I have a current model 21.5 iMac
-I have been using a 2010 13" Air with 2GB ram


I guess I am looking for a bit of insight on a recent purchase of a 13" MacBook Pro. I was planning on getting a 2012 13" Air with upgraded RAM, but I had the opportunity to purchase an open box Mid 2012 base 13" Pro for $850 and I jumped at it.

Now that I have had it for a few days, I cannot tell if I am crazy or what, but this new computer seems terribly slow. (I also do not know if it is because I have went from using an Air with and SSD to a Pro with a HDD)

I mean like oddly slow (system preferences took 15 seconds to load, Keynote took 23 seconds), and I am getting a lot of bouncing icons on the dock.

Is this because of the HDD spinning @5200 RPM? The 4 GB of ram?

Or, Should I be more concerned?

The laptop was originally purchased and out of the store for 2 days (I saw the original sales receipt) and was returned for a Windows PC.

Could it be that I have a lemon?

OR

Should just focus my efforts on upgrading the RAM and getting a SSD?

Do any of you experts out there think that this would help? Opinions are welcomed, and thank you.

 

[Weaselboy]

Going from an SSD to a HDD would certainly be noticeable, but no way should System Prefs panel take 15 seconds to open. Something is up.

If you look in Activity Monitor does it show anything running that is chewing up CPU cycles? Do you have any login items running that might be slowing things down?

 

[afinch1992]

if you can I would say wipe the drive and do a fresh install to start with. that amount of time is definitely excessive.

since its a mid-2012 it will still be under warranty, so you can take it to apple if all else fails

 

[justperry]

Powerbook G4 1.67, System Preferences opens in 6 Seconds.

Something is amiss, better reinstall the OS.
If you just got it there won't be any stuff of your own so just try.

But, as the other one said, check if there are any runaway processes and check if your RAM is OK.

Edit: There's a lot more you can do before reinstall:

Check permissions
Check HDD in Disk Utility.
Empty all caches
Run Diagnostic software( Diskwarrior is recommended)
Set up a new user and login into that account and looks how it goes.
Reset PRAM
Maybe your disk is filled to the brim, clean up
And so on

 

[JSENNY25]

hmmm...

Thanks for the quick replies.

As of right now, when I open up the activity monitor the _windowserver jumps from 28-29% down to 11% then to 8%, but every time I open the activity monitor it shows 29% for a second or two.

I do not have that many applications that load at login other than SMC Fan Control.

When I purchased the Pro, I used it for a day stock. I repaired disk permissions and did a combo update to the latest version of ML.

I did notice it was slightly slower than I suspected, but I just chalked that up to indexing spotlight.

The next day I Migrated all of my preferences, applications, and settings from a Time Machine Back Up of my MacBook Air. I Repaired Permissions again, Reset the SMC, and "zapped the RAM".

Any other insight would be appreciated.

 

[JSENNY25]

For what it is worth, I think that the combo update has helped (a little), boot time is still 55-70 seconds, but that is the HDD.

I did create a test user account and it does seem to be a bit faster, but I cannot tell if that is just a placebo affect. In my test account, system preferences opens during the first bounce on the dock. In my personal account, (with all of my settings) it loads after two bounces and not appearing on the screen immediately.

Keynote loads in test account in 2 bounces and in my personal account after 4.

It is kinda odd.

Are there any other remedies out there that may help?

 

[ramram55]

To make life easier get a ssd and upgrade the RAM you should be in business.
prior to any upgrade, find an apple store see you can request them to check your ram and hd activities, see if normal. You still have the first year warranty from apple.

 

[T5BRICK]

For what it is worth, I think that the combo update has helped (a little), boot time is still 55-70 seconds, but that is the HDD.

Before I updated the HDD in my mid 2009 I did a quick check on my boot time and it was 1:42. After updating it is 25 seconds or less. 55 seconds is pretty normal for a 5400RPM HDD.

 

[JSENNY25]

More digging

After doing a little more digging, I found out two things.

1. The combo update did not install. The installer said it was unable to complete the installation and that i needed to contact the manufacturer. (it was inactive on the dock) but the repair disk permissions did work and it made things a little faster)


2. _windowserver has reached up to 50% CPU usage wile doing nothing but internet browsing with under 5 tabs open (click to flash and do not track extensions installed) and nothing else (no other programs) running

 

[justperry]

After doing a little more digging, I found out two things.

1. The combo update did not install. The installer said it was unable to complete the installation and that i needed to contact the manufacturer. (it was inactive on the dock) but the repair disk permissions did work and it made things a little faster)

Now, that should normally not happen, until now I never saw this when installing, if it can't install it should say something like incompatible with this System or an error but never "Contact the manufacturer"
Maybe something is wrong with the machine.
It's still in the warranty so if you are close to an Apple store I would go there and show what it does.

2. _windowserver has reached up to 50% CPU usage wile doing nothing but internet browsing with under 5 tabs open (click to flash and do not track extensions installed) and nothing else (no other programs) running

Windowserver should only raise the % CPU when you open a window, resize or things like that and only for a fraction of a second, when you do little it should stay under 5%.
Side note, isn't it so that flash is hardware accelerated on your MBP, I am pretty sure last 2-3 generations are much better with flash than before.

 

[alacratstore]

What are the recent updates for *recent purchase of a 13" MacBook Pro? Does it high configurative as compared to the previous one and what it prices say? Please suggest!