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New Mac User -- starting to see random slowdowns

J

jasimon9

macrumors regular
Original poster
I have had my first Mac for about a month now (iMac 24" 2.8, 4GB). I have started noticing in the last few days, a somewhat frequently appearing "spinning disk" (don't know what it is called, but in Windows-land they call it "clocking").

In any case, I never saw this when I only had 2GB of RAM. Nor after I upgraded to 4GB which was a couple weeks ago.

But lately this is occuring enough to be a bit annoying.

Any suggestions?
 
(It's generally referred to as the beach ball) What are you doing when it starts spinning? Like, if you are just staring at your screen does it start up with no warning? That's weird. Maybe try restarting or resetting your PRAM.
 
miles01110 said:
(It's generally referred to as the beach ball) What are you doing when it starts spinning? Like, if you are just staring at your screen does it start up with no warning? That's weird. Maybe try restarting or resetting your PRAM.
Click to expand...

Generally I have not been doing anything specific. I suspect that it is "normal" for the beach ball to appear once in a while due to system housekeeping. My inexperience however does not give me a clue as to how often "once in a while" might be.
 
jasimon9 said:
Generally I have not been doing anything specific. I suspect that it is "normal" for the beach ball to appear once in a while due to system housekeeping. My inexperience however does not give me a clue as to how often "once in a while" might be.
Click to expand...

Could just be spotlight indexing. You can change how often you want it to do this in spotlight preferences.
 
The other 2 suggestions are excellent but I have a random one for you -- is the iMac in a well-ventilated area? I had problems with a desktop once because the shiny casing was in direct sunlight during the day and it was overheating the computer. Random but can make things slowdown.
 
alec said:
The other 2 suggestions are excellent but I have a random one for you -- is the iMac in a well-ventilated area? I had problems with a desktop once because the shiny casing was in direct sunlight during the day and it was overheating the computer. Random but can make things slowdown.
Click to expand...

Always good to have tips such as this!

However, ventilation is not a problem. Temps as shown by iStat Nano are in the 50 degree range. What is the "nominal" range?
 
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