MBP painfully slow

[fjs08]

Have OSX 10.7.1. Since the change from previous version, my almost 5 yr old MBP is painfully slow. I receive the beach ball consistently.
Screen draws and redraws just crawl.
Firefox is slightly faster than Safari.
Also, trying to copy and quote in GMail now on Safari brings out information in a box. Very difficult to use. Doesn't happen in Firefox.
Yesterday, I brought out of mothballs, an old XP ThinkPad my kids used in college back around the early 2000's. . Set it side by side and the ThinkPad zooms through screens.
I had originally thought it may be the room the Mac was in, which is a bit distant from router/modem. But again, doesn't seem to effect ThinkPad.
Thoughts.
Thx in advance.
Frank

 

[maflynn]

How much ram does your MBP have and did you upgrade or clean install?

Lion needs about 4gb to not feel sluggish and if you did an upgrade instead of a clean install you could be running into issues. Many of us who did a clean install have little to no problems.

 

[fjs08]

>>How much ram does your MBP have and did you upgrade or clean install?<<

2 GB ram and I did the upgrade.
To be honest, I've never had issues until I did this upgrade.
It may be the RAM and/or install issue.


Frank

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What's strange too is that at times, it zooms and other times it drags.
Not consistant. This morning it is dragging, yesterday, it was pretty fast.
I thought it was something to do with the router/modem and the positioning of the Mac in the house. But the Thinkpad doesn't seem to be effected by the room position.
Frank

 

[xgman]

2gb of ram is really thin these days. Ram prices are down. Go for at least 4gb.

 

[maflynn]

If you peruse this forum, you'll see that many people have complained about significant performance issues and the majority of those that have only had 2gb. Lion is bloated, it needs more ram then its predecessor. If possible and feasible I'd look to double the installed ram at the minimum.