Slow 2008 Macbook Uni and Mem-Hog Safari

[lbwhou]

Have a 2008 2.0 gHz unibody, 2 gb memory, and 160 gb hard drive. Recently, the laptop became agonizingly slow on boot up and waking from sleep. Also noticed that Safari was using mucho memory - sometimes up to 900 mb.

Tested the drive with Onyx, Smart Utilities, and Smart Reporter. The only problem reported was by Smart Utilities, which said that it was failing - had two (only) sectors reallocated.

Went ahead and (easily) replaced the drive with a Western Digital 7200 rpm - 320 gb. The laptop is noticeably faster on boot up, and waking from sleep. Programs also open faster. Makes me think that the two year old hard drive may have been a problem

Unfortunately, Safari is still a hog and I am considering ordering 4 gb to upgrade memory. Before I do, I wanted to ask if anyone has advice about
settings, etc. However, I have already disabled a lot on the browser (RSS, etc.). Would seem like 2 gb should be enough for my use.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MrCheeto]

Um...

Firstly, make sure you go to System Preferences>Security>File Vault and make sure it's turned off.

Secondly, any app will use as damn much memory as it chooses until you have another app that wants that memory. OS X is built to prioritize and will allocate appropriate memory when needed. Don't worry. If an app suddenly needs a whole lots o' ram, Safari will play nice. It just doesn't see it necessary to do so at the moment.

 

[torbjoern]

You should get the extension ClickToFlash. Then Safari will use far less memory. Within a year, it might become necessary to upgrade the RAM anyway - especially when OS X 10.7 Lion comes out. I also have 2 GB RAM and I have been close to upgrading it many times lately.

 

[bozz2006]

I like Safari but the memory leak (meaning it just keeps taking more and more and more memory the longer you have it open) frustrated me to the point that I dumped it for Firefox about a month ago. Much happier now. What mrcheeto says is technically correct but Safari is the exception. I can't believe Apple hasn't fixed it. It's been the same story for years.