Mac has slowed down

[badgerdozer]

I have been using mac for about 1 year now and it recently started acting up when using the internet. It used to be lighting fast.
1. Very slow opening pages.
2 many times get unable to open message. keep reentering and finally it works.
3. When playing poker on facebook continually get kicked off because it doesn't read my button push.

Fire up my old toshiba on the same connection and everything works fine.
Any disc clean up options or other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[starkmac]

What kind of computer do you have and how are you connected to the internet? Leopard? Tiger? Snow leopard?

 

[badgerdozer]

What kind of computer do you have and how are you connected to the internet? Leopard? Tiger? Snow leopard?

Macbook
I am in Baja, Mx using hardline dsl through wireless Infintium modem
I am using safari. I tried using Mozilla seems to be the same.

 

[starkmac]

I had the same problem several months back. I had been meaning to upgrade from tiger to leopard for quite some time and the slow internet made me do the upgrade. I did a clean install of leopard and that seemed to fix things. That's drastic though. I now have upgraded to snow leopard and the internet is way fast!

For you I would suggest checking how much ram you have as a starting point. click the apple (top left of screen) and click "about this mac" see what it says next to memory. If you don't have much that could be your problem. if you have under 1 GB i would suspect that to be your problem.

post to let me know.

 

[sheepopo39]

Not sure what to do but, maybe try directly connecting to your internet via wire instead of wireless to see if makes a difference, I do remember macbooks having wifi issues before (mine included) but that was with Leopard.

 

[bigdaddyp]

2 things come to mind...

How much ram do you have? If below 2 gigs your programs might be eating to much.
If your start up disk goes over 90-95 % full then you can and will experience weird and unusual slow downs.

 

[JediMeister]

You do not have any router/switch device in the mix do you? Can you have your Mac and the Toshiba online at the same time? If not, do you power cycle the modem before connecting your Mac via Ethernet? Also try to do a ping test on the Mac using Network Utility, or through command line on the Toshiba and compare the values you get. You may also want to check to see if you have a manually added DNS server, proxy settings, etc. to your Mac's network settings in Network preferences; this could cause a delay because your Mac would need to check the address of sites you visit against the server before it would resolve the page. Quick fix if you suspect a setting on the system causing networking issues is to create a new network location via Network preferences. Give that a shot and post responses to the other questions and we'll have you up and running in a jiffy.

 

[Habitus]

How much ram do you have? If below 2 gigs your programs might be eating to much.
If your start up disk goes over 90-95 % full then you can and will experience weird and unusual slow downs.

I guarantee it's your memory. Safari eats my memory! I noticed about 400mb al for safari and the flash plugin. Check your activity monitor to confirm.

Good luck

Habitus

 

[DougY]

Possible fix

I have been using mac for about 1 year now and it recently started acting up when using the internet. It used to be lighting fast.
1. Very slow opening pages.
2 many times get unable to open message. keep reentering and finally it works.
3. When playing poker on facebook continually get kicked off because it doesn't read my button push.

Fire up my old toshiba on the same connection and everything works fine.
Any disc clean up options or other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

I went to to a One on One lesson the other day, and one of the questions I asked the instructor was whether to sleep or turn off the iMac every night. He told me to restart the iMac at least once every few weeks, that sleeping the computer constantly can lead to the machine slowing down. Just thought I would mention this to you.

 

[badgerdozer]

Thanks

Thanks to all of you who responded. I will start with memory and try all the different suggestions if that does not work
Jim Hall

 

[badgerdozer]

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.31f0
Serial Number (system): W88293U20P2
Hardware UUID: 4E490EF3-EB98-51E1-AFDE-CA7701C8210F
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

 

[badgerdozer]

You do not have any router/switch device in the mix do you? Can you have your Mac and the Toshiba online at the same time? If not, do you power cycle the modem before connecting your Mac via Ethernet? Also try to do a ping test on the Mac using Network Utility, or through command line on the Toshiba and compare the values you get. You may also want to check to see if you have a manually added DNS server, proxy settings, etc. to your Mac's network settings in Network preferences; this could cause a delay because your Mac would need to check the address of sites you visit against the server before it would resolve the page. Quick fix if you suspect a setting on the system causing networking issues is to create a new network location via Network preferences. Give that a shot and post responses to the other questions and we'll have you up and running in a jiffy.

Yes I can use both computers on the internet at the same time.
No switches that I know of
Don't know how to do ping test.
Will try setting up new network location.
Failed to mention my skype is giving problems too, and it never has before.

 

[JediMeister]

As noted in my post, to do a ping test in Mac OS X, launch the Network Utility application in /Applications/Utilities or do a Spotlight search for it, and under the Ping tab, enter in the address of a website/network device, limit it to 10 pings, and then press ping. You're looking for the last section of each line which will indicate the lag/delay in milliseconds between communication from your device to the entered site/address. The higher the number, the greater the delay in sites displaying/loading in your web browser, the slower the perceived internet connection. Doing a ping test in Windows involves opening up the command line, running CMD and putting in the command "ping -n [a number] [address]" minus the quotes and the brackets. A sample ping command would read like "ping -n 10 www.apple.com"