Just put another 4GB or RAM in, and did a clean install... all better now :)

[MasterHowl]

I've been having lots of problems with Lion... crashes, sluggish speeds, and a generally bad experience!

I love the new features, so didn't really want to go back to Snow Leopard.

So today I spent some money on upgrading from 4GB or RAM to 8GB or RAM, and I totally reinstalled Lion using the recovery partition. I then used Migration Assistant to get all my files/settings back to how they were, and it's like a new machine!.

iPhoto launches with three bounces... it was 20 to 25 seconds before! iTunes launches 1000000 times quicker too! My whole system is much... snappier

Just through I'd share the experience, and would advise anyone considering upgrading to 8GB of RAM with Lion to do so! It's well worth the investment

 

[Taz Mangus]

I've been having lots of problems with Lion... crashes, sluggish speeds, and a generally bad experience!

I love the new features, so didn't really want to go back to Snow Leopard.

So today I spent some money on upgrading from 4GB or RAM to 8GB or RAM, and I totally reinstalled Lion using the recovery partition. I then used Migration Assistant to get all my files/settings back to how they were, and it's like a new machine!.

iPhoto launches with three bounces... it was 20 to 25 seconds before! iTunes launches 1000000 times quicker too! My whole system is much... snappier

Just through I'd share the experience, and would advise anyone considering upgrading to 8GB of RAM with Lion to do so! It's well worth the investment

Out of curisoity, did you do a clean install the first time?

 

[baryon]

What made your computer faster? The additional RAM or the Clean Install?

 

[Grootstyr]

Most likely the clean install did the job.
4GB should be sufficient for Mac OS X Lion.
When my RAM is completely full - because of some VMs - my iMac slows down, not a second earlier.
I cannot imagine that 4GB is completely stuffed on idle.

 

[BaldyUK]

I had 2GB in my mid 2009 13" MBP with Snow Leopard installed. I upgraded to 8GB in anticipated of Lion and it was honestly like a new laptop - so much faster especially in programs like Aperture. The difference was far greater than I'd hoped.

No problems running Lion either.

 

[kasakka]

4 GB is plenty if you don't run virtual machines.

The clean install is most likely what made the OP's system run better.

 

[MasterHowl]

Out of curisoity, did you do a clean install the first time?

No, I just ran the installer from Snow Leopard straight from the App Store download.

What made your computer faster? The additional RAM or the Clean Install?

Well, I went into the Apple Store, and the guy put the RAM in, and when he booted my machine back up to check if everything was okay... and it took ages to boot up (as usual), and when I logged in I got the old beach ball for ages (as usual), and he opened some apps which took ages (as usual)... So he advised my to do a clean install, which I did.

Not sure if the RAM or the clean install had the bigger effect, but it's running much much faster than Snow Leopard ever did! So I think it's a combination of the two.

Parallels runs much much better which is great too

 

[kopite19]

I had 4gb when I first upgraded to Lion and it wasn't too bad but there was some page outs which I didn't get in SL. I put this down to Safari and it's memory hogging. Got a cheap deal on 2 x 4GB's of RAM, everything was quick again. Switched from Safari to Chrome Canary (I like the Lion native full screen) and I currently have 2GB free and 0 page-outs in 10 days of uptime.

Lovely.

 

[Taz Mangus]

No, I just ran the installer from Snow Leopard straight from the App Store download.

It probably was the clean install which cleared up the slow down issue for you. I suspect that a lot of people, that are having slow down issues using Lion, would resolve it by simply doing a clean install. The main reason why the clean install worked is because it got rid of corrupted preference files or got rid of anything lingering fron Snow Leopard that is not compatible with Lion.

I did a clean install of Lion on my MacBook Pro which only had 4GB RAM. It had no slow down issues after I installed Lion. I only just added an extra 4GB RAM to the MacBook Pro.

The extra 4GB RAM will allow more breathing room for Lion to operate.

Glad to hear that you are backup and running.

 

[maflynn]

I found Lion to be fairly quick and stable on MBP which has 8gb of ram, but I also did a clean install.

 

[MonkeySee....]

I think is why I didn't/havent any issue. I didn't do a clean install but i have barely anything on my iMac only a few extra programmes and also have 8gig of ram.

Nice work op.