My eMac is extremely slow and Im plagued with the colorful "beachball"....any suggestion to clean it up and make it work more efficiently?? I always keep it on and rarely put it to sleep, so that it can do its nightly cycle. Thanks..
I had this problem when I had only the 256mb RAM it came pre-installed with. It seemed to be getting progressively slower. I found upgrading it to 768mb of RAM was a massive boost in speed and apps opened a LOT faster. iPhoto was one of the apps that opened a lot quicker. Now I have a gig of ram, but the extra RAM from 768mb hardly ever gets used... I would recommend getting more RAM.
Do not the stock hard-drives operate at 5400 RPM? Most if not all the HD replacements for the eMac run at 7200 so that could increase your responsiveness as well.