Slow Mac

[MacBH928]

hello everyone..

I have a 2002 imac, 800 mhz with updated ram to 768.

Lately I have been noticing my computer suffering with web browsing. Something like switching tabs or loading a website would make the beachball come out.

The other applications and computer use, is fine, they run at the speed they are supposed to run at(800 mhz g4)...but the web browsing on safari and firefox became very heavy.

id o not understand this. While typing this message I just suffered from lag, as i finished the sentence and the browser(safari) still didnt get it. A couple seconds later it typed the whole thing out. Also the system just doesnt seem to be snappy as it used to be.

i recall one person telling me that the OS X use extensive resources making the system lag on my old machine.
I believe its a long argument why computers turn slower by time.

but my machine seems unable to load animated gif(something we used to suffer in '98!) or the use flash will kill it. Its not like flash and animated gif didnt exist when I bought this machine. Any idea why such things happen.

one site that is so heavy on my browser is gamespot.com . It will take a really long time to load.

 

[merl1n]

I'm not sure what MacOS you are running, but your processor is fairly slow and you don't have that much memory.

If this problem is recent, you may have some bad cache files. You can try downloading some shareware/freeware programs to clean your cache files (OnyX, Cocktail, etc).

You can also try a Safe Boot to clean some of the cache files and have the system run a file system check and repair (fsck).

 

[shwc]

Check your DNS settings (do a search on this site for "slow internet DNS")

Another thing to try ... create another user account (open system preferences, Accounts, hit the + button) then log into that account. Run Safari. Is browsing better than or the same.

If browsing is faster, than you likely have a corrupted preference file or configuration problem in the original account. If the new account is slow, you may have interference (if using wireless) or bandwidth issues (nothing you can do about that.

Other non-internet things to remember to keep your computer happy is do not store lots of stuff on the desktop (each icon on the desktop counts as an active window, resource wise) and always keep 10+ gigabytes free space on your hard drive.

 

[MacBH928]

sorry i didnt include more information earlier on
I am running latest tiger, and I have 6.25 GB free on my hard disk

Ill try the cache thing though
Ill check the DNS problem too

thanx for the input
looking for additional advice

its hard to believe a computer that costed me around $3000 6 years ago
today its considered "fairly slow"
damn technology

I hope this doesnt happen with the new 2.8 mac

 

[yellow]

I hope this doesnt happen with the new 2.8 mac

Of course it will. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast.