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farqueue

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 18, 2006
456
32
How can people say macbooks are screaming when they clearly arent?
I have a 1.83 macbook with 512 apple stock ram (ignore my sig, i sold it off)

Its as slow as hell... takes like 8-10 seconds for safari too bootup when u click on it initially

It is kinda laggy when you have itunes, adium, safari and preview open.

Dashboard takes like 30s to load ( i only have wikipedia, dictiionary, weather, calender and 1 clock)


So can someone explain to me why so many are saying macbooks are screaming??

(PS: are they implying its screaming with 2gb of ram?)


PS: its even laggy to start neo office with 0 programs open except finder
 
You need more RAM. My Mini "screams" even at 1.66Ghz with 2GB of ram, that processor is more than enough for your needs, you just need more ram to prevent it from always going to the swap file.
 
See.....

w/ 512mb, mbs are only soft spoken
w/ 1gb, they start to yell

and when you feed them 2gbs, they will scream ^_^

Ram is kind of like caffeine.
 
So you had 2GB of ram, you sold it off, and now you have 512MB and you couldn't tell the difference in speed when simply starting up an application? If that's the case, then there's something definitely wrong with your macbook.
 
I'm glad someone posted this. My BlackBook has 2gb and it definately doesn't scream. Firefox, iTunes, iPhoto bounce at least 6 times before opening. And the pinwheel spins quite often. Whereas, my iMac G5 NEVER sees the pinwheel.

Also, the apps don't bounce as many times after they are opened at least once. It seems they only lag on the first launch. Anyway, I enjoy my MacBook, but it doesn't launch apps as quickly as my iMac with 1.5gb.
 
As stated in 7,583,290,501 other threads...OSX runs better with at least 1 gig of ram. 512 is the bare minimun that OSX will run on.

ripfrankwhite said:
I'm glad someone posted this. My BlackBook has 2gb and it definately doesn't scream. Firefox, iTunes, iPhoto bounce at least 6 times before opening. And the pinwheel spins quite often. Whereas, my iMac G5 NEVER sees the pinwheel.

Also, the apps don't bounce as many times after they are opened at least once. It seems they only lag on the first launch. Anyway, I enjoy my MacBook, but it doesn't launch apps as quickly as my iMac with 1.5gb.

I've got a BlackBook with 2 gigs of ram as well. Just rebooted my system and counted my bounces.

iChat: 2
Safari: 2
iPhoto: 2
iTunes: 2 and about 1 second for the mini player to appear
Mail: 2
Photoshop CS2: 5
Microsoft Word: 3

This is opening an application and not closing the previous ones. I've still got 717 megs of ram left unused according to iStat Pro.

**Edit** Just quit Photoshop and opened it again. Got three bounces this time.
 
HecubusPro said:
So you had 2GB of ram, you sold it off, and now you have 512MB and you couldn't tell the difference in speed when simply starting up an application? If that's the case, then there's something definitely wrong with your macbook.
HecubusPro said:
So you had 2GB of ram, you sold it off, and now you have 512MB and you couldn't tell the difference in speed when simply starting up an application? If that's the case, then there's something definitely wrong with your macbook.


With 2gb of ram, applications do not boot quicker (ie same number of bounces) but i can run MORE apps with less lag. (i can also run more widgets too)

Boot time does not even increase.
 
rtdgoldfish said:
I've got a BlackBook with 2 gigs of ram as well. Just rebooted my system and counted my bounces.

iChat: 2
Safari: 2
iPhoto: 2
iTunes: 2 and about 1 second for the mini player to appear
Mail: 2
Photoshop CS2: 5
Microsoft Word: 3

This is opening an application and not closing the previous ones. I've still got 717 megs of ram left unused according to iStat Pro.

**Edit** Just quit Photoshop and opened it again. Got three bounces this time.


I did the same thing and here are my results of the first and second launch:

iChat 4, 2
Safari 2, 1
iPhoto 3, 1
Microsoft Word 16, crash
iTunes 2, 1
Mail 3, 1
PhotoshopCS 9, crash

I tried to reopen Word, and PS CS and they crashes everytime.
 
ripfrankwhite said:
I'm glad someone posted this. My BlackBook has 2gb and it definately doesn't scream. Firefox, iTunes, iPhoto bounce at least 6 times before opening. And the pinwheel spins quite often. Whereas, my iMac G5 NEVER sees the pinwheel.

Also, the apps don't bounce as many times after they are opened at least once. It seems they only lag on the first launch. Anyway, I enjoy my MacBook, but it doesn't launch apps as quickly as my iMac with 1.5gb.


This is exactly what i meant. Thanks ripfrankwhite :D

rtdgoldfish said:
I've got a BlackBook with 2 gigs of ram as well. Just rebooted my system and counted my bounces.

iChat: 2
Safari: 2
iPhoto: 2
iTunes: 2 and about 1 second for the mini player to appear
Mail: 2
Photoshop CS2: 5
Microsoft Word: 3

This is opening an application and not closing the previous ones. I've still got 717 megs of ram left unused according to iStat Pro.

**Edit** Just quit Photoshop and opened it again. Got three bounces this time.

ripfrankwhite said:
I did the same thing and here are my results of the first and second launch:

iChat 4, 2
Safari 2, 1
iPhoto 3, 1
Microsoft Word 16, crash
iTunes 2, 1
Mail 3, 1
PhotoshopCS 9, crash

I tried to reopen Word, and PS CS and they crashes everytime.

Wow r u sure you had 3 bounces for MS word?
When i had 2gb of ram, it must have taken at LEAST 15 seconds for it to load.

So i guess the question lies within what kind of ram do you use?
I used a 2gb generic one from powerline memory.
 
farqueue said:
Wow r u sure you had 3 bounces for MS word?
When i had 2gb of ram, it must have taken at LEAST 15 seconds for it to load.

So i guess the question lies within what kind of ram do you use?
I used a 2gb generic one from powerline memory.

To check, I just restarted. I opened iChat, Safari, and iTunes in that order (my usual apps on boot). Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready.

I'm using 2 gigs of Corsair ram.

If someone sends me a link to a program that makes videos out of OSX, I'll post one to prove it.
 
rtdgoldfish said:
To check, I just restarted. I opened iChat, Safari, and iTunes in that order (my usual apps on boot). Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready.

I'm using 2 gigs of Corsair ram.

If someone sends me a link to a program that makes videos out of OSX, I'll post one to prove it.

I believe you, I definately wasn't doubting you. But it is too bad that my performance is so much worse than yours. It must be my ram right? I got VERY cheap from a link on ramseeker.com. I forget the vendor, but it was $140 for 2x1gb.
 
farqueue said:
With 2gb of ram, applications do not boot quicker (ie same number of bounces) but i can run MORE apps with less lag. (i can also run more widgets too)

Boot time does not even increase.

Did you get the 7200rpm hard drive? Boot time is dependent on hard drive speed, and in this day and age NOT on processor. What ram will do to help is to cache disk sectors in memory so your subsequent launches of the same program would be faster.

ie: start firefox, close firefox, reopen firefox.

Extra ram would help firefox startup quicker on the 2nd time.
 
but i want aps to start quickly the first time
i dont want to spend $ on 2gb of ram then wait 15s for MS word to boot up while in class.
 
Word doesn't run natively on Intel why would you expect it to load quickly?

As mentioned above you need more RAM to make OS X more enjoyable, but as also mentioned above you need a faster HDD if you want things to load faster. Just don't expect any app running via Rosetta to do so.
 
risc said:
Word doesn't run natively on Intel why would you expect it to load quickly?

As mentioned above you need more RAM to make OS X more enjoyable, but as also mentioned above you need a faster HDD if you want things to load faster. Just don't expect any app running via Rosetta to do so.

rtdgoldfish said:
To check, I just restarted. I opened iChat, Safari, and iTunes in that order (my usual apps on boot). Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready.

I'm using 2 gigs of Corsair ram.

If someone sends me a link to a program that makes videos out of OSX, I'll post one to prove it.


But look at his performance.
 
ripfrankwhite said:
But look at his performance.

I don't believe him. That isn't enough time for Rosetta to even start up. If he had of said 15 seconds yeah sure I may of believed him.

ripfrankwhite said:
I tried to reopen Word, and PS CS and they crashes everytime.

It sounds like there is something wrong with your install since the only apps that are crashing aren't running natively.
 
farqueue said:
Its as slow as hell... takes like 8-10 seconds for safari too bootup when u click on it initially

It is kinda laggy when you have itunes, adium, safari and preview open.

Dashboard takes like 30s to load ( i only have wikipedia, dictiionary, weather, calender and 1 clock)
I've not used the MacBooks but that doesn't seem right. My old PowerBook launches apps faster than that and isn't very laggy with iTunes, Safari, Mail, Adium, and several other apps open. More RAM (least 1 GB) and a 7200 RPM drive will make for a huge performance increase though. But, maybe something is wrong with yours.
 
risc said:
I don't believe him. That isn't enough time for Rosetta to even start up. If he had of said 15 seconds yeah sure I may of believed him.

I tried one more time. Totally shut down the system, not a restart this time. First application I opened after my dock appears was MS Word. 5 bounces and about 2 seconds of the Word load screen and I have a blank document. Maybe you guys have a lot of stuff running in the background. Dashboard widgets, system processes, I don't know. All I know is it takes me less than 10 seconds to have a blank Word document.
 
rtdgoldfish said:
I tried one more time. Totally shut down the system, not a restart this time. First application I opened after my dock appears was MS Word. 5 bounces and about 2 seconds of the Word load screen and I have a blank document. Maybe you guys have a lot of stuff running in the background. Dashboard widgets, system processes, I don't know. All I know is it takes me less than 10 seconds to have a blank Word document.

5 bounces and then a couple of seconds of looking at the Word logo is not
"Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready. " which reads like you click on the icon and 2 seconds later you have Word up and running.

If you say it takes 5 bounces before you see the Word logo I am quite happy to believe you.
 
risc said:
5 bounces and then a couple of seconds of looking at the Word logo is not
"Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready. " which reads like you click on the icon and 2 seconds later you have Word up and running.

One last shut down before I go to bed. This time I go back to my normal iChat->iTunes->Safari launch at boot before I open anything else. MS Word gives me three bounces and the normal splash screen.

Again, show me a link to a video capture program and I'll post a video.
 
rtdgoldfish said:
One last shut down before I go to bed. This time I go back to my normal iChat->iTunes->Safari launch at boot before I open anything else. MS Word gives me three bounces and the normal splash screen.

Again, show me a link to a video capture program and I'll post a video.

You have nothing to prove to me, I accept what you are saying I just took issue with you saying "Opened MS Word and not two seconds later I have a blank document ready. ".
 
My 2Ghz MB also felt quite slow, especially when multiple apps were open. I upgraded the RAM first to 1.25GB, and it felt A LOT faster, then when I upgraded to 2GB, it really does "scream":) :cool:
 
Hi, a bit of a stupid question here, what does "scream" mean? More noise? "Happiness" for the MacBook processor? :eek:

Edit: Hehe, I got it. Scream as in more speed.
 
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