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How much RAM do you have, and what's your uptime? Sounds like you need more RAM, but that's not MacBook-specific, just general principle.
 
Looking at the totals in Activity Monitor is useless.

You have to look at the instant activity in top.
 
Looking at the totals in Activity Monitor is useless.

You have to look at the instant activity in top.
It's not useless. The instant activity won't tell you if you're paging or not. The System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor will.
 
It's not useless. The instant activity won't tell you if you're paging or not. The System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor will.

The total activity tells you nothing about how much the system is paging.

If you look at the instant activity with your heaviest workload, you will know if you need more memory.
 
The total activity tells you nothing about how much the system is paging.

If you look at the instant activity with your heaviest workload, you will know if you need more memory.
Yes, the total tells you the total amount of page outs since the last restart. The swap file used tells you the current amount of drive space consumed by swap files. This is certainly enough information to determine how much the system is paging under normal workloads. It's unrealistic to expect that a user can spot the exact peaks of memory usage in the instant activity. The instant activity does not show paging activity.
 
Yes, the total tells you the total amount of page outs since the last restart. The swap file used tells you the current amount of drive space consumed by swap files. This is certainly enough information to determine how much the system is paging under normal workloads. It's unrealistic to expect that a user can spot the exact peaks of memory usage in the instant activity. The instant activity does not show paging activity.

You have no idea how much is too much if you look at the totals.
 
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