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MacBook Speed issues

C

cjsuperstar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 22, 2007
15
0
Hi, I bought the new SR MacBook last month. I do like it but I have some issues with the speed, It is the 2.2ghz with 1gb RAM model. I upgraded from an antiquated 700mhz PC and maybe I overestimated the speed of the computers of nowadays.

My issue is that I think I may have some problem with the RAM, I took it to the applestore and they said that nothing was wrong with it (they did a 24hr test regime thingy on it). I see the beachball thing quite often and some times Safari seems to freeze up alot. when I have Safari, Itunes and Garageband open, the system seems extremely slow, using hte magic garageband thing is pretty much impossible.

As I said before I am new to mac and this "new generation of computers" in general, I just wanted to know If I am overly paranoid and this is normal or if there is something wrong with the computer.

It should be said that having upgrading from such an old computer I was expecting a lighting fast and perfect computer.

Also what is your opinion on speed improvements since the early 2000s?

thanks in advance
 
My advice is to check Activity Monitor under the memory tab and see how many page outs you're getting. If your applications are using a lot of RAM then then the page outs (virtual memory usage that's written to the slow hard disk!) well be much greater then the page ins (super fast real RAM usage!)

I wouldn't settle for anything less then 2 GB of RAM in a computer right now.

What kind of applications do you normally run?
 
If you're getting the beachball, you probably need more RAM. It's really cheap to purchase a 1 X 2GB stick right now, especially with all the deals.
Have a look at the RAM buying guide.
 
It really sounds like you need more ram. I haven't worked much with Garage Band, but I would imaging that it is pretty memory intensive, and to combine that with iTunes and Safari, seems like you will get alot of memory paging.

Checking memory stats with Activity monitor, as had been suggested, is the best place to start...
 
running just Safari,Azureus and Itunes the Activity monitor says that I am using up:
VM size of 35GB
page ins 2.34GB and page outs 515.12MB
over 800MB of the 1GB available

It does however say that the CPU is only used at 5.6% !!!!

Yeah I'm also pretty sure that the Mac uses up alot of RAM using Garageband but the problem I had was with Safari slowing down when used by itself...
Anyway I'll look into getting new RAM.
 
Spotlight may also be indexing your drive. Also launch disk utility to verify your hard drive and repair permissions to see of those help
 
cjsuperstar said:
when I have Safari, Itunes and Garageband open, the system seems extremely slow, using hte magic garageband thing is pretty much impossible.
Click to expand...

Really? I have a Santa Rosa MacBook with a 2.0GHz processor, 80GB HD and 1GB RAM, and using Magic Garageband and running multiple applications at once is fine for me.

I recommend downloading WhatSize (from the Apple Downloads page), for your MacBook. It's an application that does a whole Hard Drive scan, and shows you all the applications, photos, files etc that's on your Hard Drive that maybe you didn't even know of! After deleting unwanted items, your MacBook may run a lot faster.

I hope this helps.
 
Do you ever experience the beachball thingy when your using the magic garageband? It usually takes a bit of time for mine to load up, It works well when it's on snippet setting and I can change instruments around and all of that but It's just when I choose to play song, it displays a message saying that their might not be sufficient memory.

When I brought my MacBook in to the apple store, the guy said that I had loose RAM, but he also said that he fixed it, I haven't seen any changes in the performance since then. As said before they tested it and came up with nothing.

How do I know if spotlight is indexing my drive I have Activity monitor open and it is showing very little activity.
 
I have never gotten the beachball when using Magic Garageband, only when I've finished my song and want to save it to my computer (but it doesn't crash or anything, and it takes around 1-2 minutes). I have never heard about might not having sufficient memory when playing a song- that's odd.

Sometimes when I'm on the Normal Garageband (the one where you can compose songs with the keyboard etc) it can crash and come up with the beachball.
 
As others are suggesting, updating RAM will work wonders

Pick up 4 gigs and max the macbook out, you won't be sorry...especially at such cheap prices
 
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