My MBP is getting slow

[Young Spade]

Even now my page ins are 239MB while my page outs are 134MB(!!) which is very high ratio. Looks like I'm going to need some more RAM after all.

Wow, yea pick up some. But just a heads up, you should restart your computer once in a while as well; I regularly keep 15+ tabs open in Canary, Word, Excel, itunes, iCal, Things, Schoolhouse, and a ton of background applications open 24/7

I think today was the first time I restarted it in... what, 2 weeks? The computer would randomly slow down and Canary would end up using 300+ percent CPU at points and I'd have random lags and halts; so yea, it helps to restart at least once a week (I always just sleep the machine since I'm leaving my house in the morning or moving between class and the library).

 

[Tanax]

Wow, yea pick up some. But just a heads up, you should restart your computer once in a while as well; I regularly keep 15+ tabs open in Canary, Word, Excel, itunes, iCal, Things, Schoolhouse, and a ton of background applications open 24/7

I think today was the first time I restarted it in... what, 2 weeks? The computer would randomly slow down and Canary would end up using 300+ percent CPU at points and I'd have random lags and halts; so yea, it helps to restart at least once a week (I always just sleep the machine since I'm leaving my house in the morning or moving between class and the library).

That's still a lot more than I can.
Currently got 1.4GB(yeah - GIGABYTE) of page outs.

I never restart the computer I always shut it off instead but that should be working just as good as a restart.

 

[Young Spade]

That's still a lot more than I can.
Currently got 1.4GB(yeah - GIGABYTE) of page outs.

I never restart the computer I always shut it off instead but that should be working just as good as a restart.

Ah, but restart/shut down achieve the same results; in this case, i was just saying that it's good to restart/shut down once every week or so if you do a lot of work. Of course, it isn't going to solve an issue with a lack of ram, but when you constantly move files and do a lot of things with files, programs, and opening/closing of various things, for some reason, it just gets "clogged", to put it in terms that are simple.

Just order some ram tonight or something and you should be good to go.

 

[Tanax]

Just thought I'd post an update on this!
I've successfully installed 8GB of Corsair's RAM-memories into the MBP and can happily report that it is running A LOT smoother now.

After checking the Activity Monitor, my RAM-usage seems to be holding steady at 2.5GB(which could explain why 2GB of RAM wasn't enough) while regular browsing. 0 page outs since I've installed the RAM (which was 6 hours ago). After 6 hours I would've had at least 500MB of page outs with the 2GB of RAM I had before.

It is still a bit slow while loading some pages. I don't think it's the CPU that is slow. Either it is the 2 year old 5400RPM -HDD that is simply not cutting it. Or it is something with Firefox itself that is just not entirely optimized. Or some Firefox plugin that is clogging up the computer.

Either way, it's much better now and I'll definitely be able to use it better now until I get the new one(either 2011-model or wait until 2012-model).

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[Young Spade]

That's good to hear; what speeds are you expecting though? The internet connection itself is what makes up most of it; if you don't have a T1 line, dont expect to get the speeds the Apple machines get inside their store.

Just loading a page right now, it took 5 seconds on the dot to load Engadget; my highest reported DL speed is at 4.2 mbps.

I stated the "reported" because it's "never" as high as the actual reported that the company gives.

 

[Tanax]

That's good to hear; what speeds are you expecting though? The internet connection itself is what makes up most of it; if you don't have a T1 line, dont expect to get the speeds the Apple machines get inside their store.

Just loading a page right now, it took 5 seconds on the dot to load Engadget; my highest reported DL speed is at 4.2 mbps.

I stated the "reported" because it's "never" as high as the actual reported that the company gives.

I'm not talking about the loading speed, sorry for phrasing it so badly. I'm talking about while loading a page, it still gets laggy. For instance, if I load a large website.. until it's finished loading, if I scroll on the page, it's lagging and jumpy. And it occassionally freezes for half a second and then continues loading. That has nothing to do with the connection speed.

We have really good connection speeds in Sweden(one of the best in the world actually) and even though I'm not on the 100/100mb fiber, nor the 200mb that recently has been released here, I did get 26mb/s download speed according to http://www.speedtest.net/ so speed is not an issue.

But like I said, the loading speed of the page wasn't what I meant, sorry! I was talking about the fact that the browser seems laggy while loading a page.

 

[Young Spade]

I'm not talking about the loading speed, sorry for phrasing it so badly. I'm talking about while loading a page, it still gets laggy. For instance, if I load a large website.. until it's finished loading, if I scroll on the page, it's lagging and jumpy. And it occassionally freezes for half a second and then continues loading. That has nothing to do with the connection speed.

We have really good connection speeds in Sweden(one of the best in the world actually) and even though I'm not on the 100/100mb fiber, nor the 200mb that recently has been released here, I did get 26mb/s download speed according to http://www.speedtest.net/ so speed is not an issue.

But like I said, the loading speed of the page wasn't what I meant, sorry! I was talking about the fact that the browser seems laggy while loading a page.

*gets jealous* You're in SWEDEN?

But you guys have like, the best internet, from what I've read anyway, and I mean, there are a TON of countries that topple the US in terms of performance over price; on that, are you paying for just the internet or television, etc. also? What are you paying?

But in terms of that lag... yea, I have it as well. I would go along the lines of the HD speed and processor on that one; I 'think" and think because I havne' tread anything about it but I'm somewhat good at inferring...

That the browser itself is the problem. We're waiting on the browser to render the information and throw it at is. Sort of like... ah... the iPhone being very smooth through and throughout, a lot smoother than say, a dual core Motorola Atrix runnign 2.2. The software and OS slow the Atrix down and the GPU with iOS (which is relatively light) keep the iPhone at very good speeds.

I think that if you were to use a different browser and analyze the behavior of heavy sites across a wide variety (Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome AND the betas/bleeding edge/nightly builds), I'm sure you'd see a change in how they handle the page rendering.

Like how, on my iPad (first gen), the page would load but if I scrolled down before it was done, I'd get checkerboxes.

I dunno, just a thought.

EDIT: Definitely ordering 8gb of RAM... hopefully by this weekend. I run VMs (bootcamp and other OSs) in Parallels and the entire machine slows down when one is running. Giving the VM a full gig and still having tons left over is going to be a godsend. Plus, from what I see, performance itself along with battery life barely goes down when running the VM, given that you aren't doing anything too cpu intensive.

 

[Tanax]

*gets jealous* You're in SWEDEN?

But you guys have like, the best internet, from what I've read anyway, and I mean, there are a TON of countries that topple the US in terms of performance over price; on that, are you paying for just the internet or television, etc. also? What are you paying?

But in terms of that lag... yea, I have it as well. I would go along the lines of the HD speed and processor on that one; I 'think" and think because I havne' tread anything about it but I'm somewhat good at inferring...

That the browser itself is the problem. We're waiting on the browser to render the information and throw it at is. Sort of like... ah... the iPhone being very smooth through and throughout, a lot smoother than say, a dual core Motorola Atrix runnign 2.2. The software and OS slow the Atrix down and the GPU with iOS (which is relatively light) keep the iPhone at very good speeds.

I think that if you were to use a different browser and analyze the behavior of heavy sites across a wide variety (Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome AND the betas/bleeding edge/nightly builds), I'm sure you'd see a change in how they handle the page rendering.

Like how, on my iPad (first gen), the page would load but if I scrolled down before it was done, I'd get checkerboxes.

I dunno, just a thought.

EDIT: Definitely ordering 8gb of RAM... hopefully by this weekend. I run VMs (bootcamp and other OSs) in Parallels and the entire machine slows down when one is running. Giving the VM a full gig and still having tons left over is going to be a godsend. Plus, from what I see, performance itself along with battery life barely goes down when running the VM, given that you aren't doing anything too cpu intensive.

Hahah
Yeah, I'm in Sweden

We're paying, uhm.. around 50$ a month, we get Internet(25~mb/s), Internet Telephone aswell as television(base channels + 8 channels we can pick ourselves). I think it's fairly reasonable

I do think it is the browser. Or the plugins. I tried loading engaget.com aswell as that newssite I told you about before, aftonbladet.se, on Safari. It is just sooo much more smoother. I can scroll while it's loading, it's loading faster. It's just.. wow. I'm totally switching if I can find the Delicious-bookmark plugin for Safari!

Go with the 8GB man, you won't be disappointed! I definitely noticed a big difference and for the little price that they cost, it's definitely worth it!