MacBook Running Snow Leopard...SLOW!

[Jess1987]

Hi,

I own a early 2008 Black MacBook 3,1 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB Memory and a 160GB HD.

I recently put all my photos and music onto an external HD, and now have 90GB of free space. As part of the same operation I updated to Snow Leopard. It is now running quite slow. Not unfunctionally slow but definitely not what you would expect from a full clean out, an extra 40GB of space and a new system.

I can't remember what OS I had before this but it was definitely not this slow. iphoto takes ages to load, I wouldn't even think about putting photoshop back on it and Pages often drags the chain a little too.

When I did the new install, I did a big clean up, repaired permissions, etc.

Questions:
1. Will extra ram solve all my issues?
2. What are some other options I could look at to speed things up again?
3. Am I best to maybe just downgrade back to leopard?

PS: I'm not massive on computer jargon so a little consideration in any helpful tips would be appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[GGJstudios]

Check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

(not indexing)

(indexing)

Performance Tips For Mac OS X

 

[Jess1987]

No it is not indexing, thanks though.

 

[Jess1987]

Ok, so I just finished going through that whole list of things from the above link and changed a few things. Nothing major. (I don't think)

I used to run photoshop fine on my macbook but since the update I haven't even loaded it back on because iphoto won't even open half as quick as it used to.

I know I should probably be getting a new computer by now but I won't be and don't want to.

I suppose I just need to know, is ram everything? If I have done all the little changes suggested, is that all that is left to do? Update RAM?

 

[GGJstudios]

I suppose I just need to know, is ram everything? If I have done all the little changes suggested, is that all that is left to do? Update RAM?

Many say RAM is cheap, so get as much as you can, even if it's not needed. However, RAM prices continue to fall, and if more isn't needed now, waiting to buy at a later time when it's actually needed will probably result in a lower price.

To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.


Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor

 

[Jess1987]

Cool, I'll do that. Is it in a certain time frame particularly or just number of page outs after an average work session?

 

[GGJstudios]

Cool, I'll do that. Is it in a certain time frame particularly or just number of page outs after an average work session?

No particular time frame, but I'd give it several hours of what you normally do... perhaps a day.

 

[tzdsc]

Cool, I'll do that. Is it in a certain time frame particularly or just number of page outs after an average work session?

Hello Jess,

I have exactly the same problem like you, and I wonder did you in the end solve the puzzle? Did you manage to get at least 4GB of ram? Or was is something else? I have the same mac and since I installed Snow L. photoshop cs3 is so slow. And my cool works a lot! Processor probablly sweating like mad Weird. And it's a pain in the *** to go back to Leopard because I'd have to format the drive, re-install the programs...etc.

I hope you can let me know if you had any solutions.

Thanks!