New MBP slower than old MB

[richkohring]

Hi, we bought a macbook in jan, had a liquid spill and had to replace so bought a MBP with highers specs (although the MP was upgraded to 4gb and 320gb hd).

My wife uses AI and usually has a 5-10 'documents?' open on it. She also has firefox and maybe sometimes excel on.

She keeps saying the MBP is slower than the MB. Apparently she didn't have any issues with the spinning wheel on th MB but it happens often with the new one. Is having so many AI docs open the problem? I've just purchased a 8gb ram kit to upgrade, hopefully this will help? We've updated to lion and this hasn't made a difference.

any advice apreciated, thanks.

rich

 

[GGJstudios]

For performance issues, there are a few things you can check:

• Check your Login Items under System Preferences > Accounts to see what you have automatically launching.
• Also check /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Users/yourusername/Library/LaunchAgents/ for items launching at startup
• Look at what widgets you may have running.
• Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
• Take a look at the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive "page outs", a sign that you may benefit from more RAM.
• Make sure you're not running any 3rd party antivirus app, as many of those will drain resources, reducing performance. They're not needed to protect your Mac.

 

[richkohring]

VM SIZE 170GB
PAGE INS 15.7GB
PAGE OOUTS 8.16GB
SWAP USED 250MB

how does that sound?

 

[miniConvert]

It's paging out a lot, so it's running out of RAM.

Upgrading the RAM should make the difference.

 

[GGJstudios]

VM SIZE 170GB
PAGE INS 15.7GB
PAGE OOUTS 8.16GB
SWAP USED 250MB

how does that sound?

Your page outs are quite high, but remember they are cumulative since your last restart. To accurately determine if you need more RAM, restart your computer to reset your page outs, then track page outs under your normal workload. If they are significant, you'll likely benefit from more RAM.

 

[richkohring]

Your page outs are quite high, but remember they are cumulative since your last restart. To accurately determine if you need more RAM, restart your computer to reset your page outs, then track page outs under your normal workload. If they are significant, you'll likely benefit from more RAM.

It's paging out a lot, so it's running out of RAM.

Upgrading the RAM should make the difference.

lovely and lovely, not quite sure what some of this means but hopeful the 8gb upgrade will make a difference. After many arguments about running so many adobe illustraitor documents at the same time being partly to blame for the wheel of misfortune I can now ''physically' see how each one has an effect when it's opened or closed (+ -). Off course I'll still be wrong though.

btw what is kernel_task? it looks quite obviously like it needs to be running, there tens of things runnign at around 6-30mb though.

 

[GGJstudios]

btw what is kernel_task? it looks quite obviously like it needs to be running, there tens of things runnign at around 6-30mb though.

It's the Mac OS X operating system. Most of those processes you see are necessary. Don't stop any unless you know what you're doing.

 

[JacaByte]

What type of hard drive does the MBP have? (e.g. what size and RPM)

 

[richkohring]

What type of hard drive does the MBP have? (e.g. what size and RPM)

just the standard, is it 320gb at 5400rpsomething? Can't afford SSD or whatsicalled. :-( My wife wasn't happy seeing an invoice arrive in her email inbox for £66 (8gb for mbp and imac).

It was me who spilt the coffee on the busted mb btw :-(

 

[mark28]

Is the new Mac running Lion? If yes, then downgrade to Snow Leopard and see if all problems disappear.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

It sounds like it's just the difference between Snow Leopard and Lion, to me as well.

 

[richkohring]

The problem was the same when on SL. Out of interest how do i downgrade to SL?

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

How old is this new MBP? Any chance spotlight is still indexing away?

Also, 5400rpm drive can be painful, at least for me they are. Going to a 7200rpm drive made a big difference. Yes a SSD is faster - but cost quite a bit more...