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Slow running 2011 i5 macbook with mountain lion

D

dgear1984

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 22, 2012
8
0
Hello,

I have a 2011 2.3 i5 4gb macbook pro.

Have done all the updates from new and have the latest mountain lion installed.

The computer has moments when it runs very slow, mouse does not move and the colour pallet is just spinning and i can hear the hard drive running. Its almost like another program is running in the back ground and causing this? This lasts for 30sec to a minute and then will be fine but running slow for maybe 3-4 minutes and then the same happens again. Only way to stop it is with restarting the computer. I only normally have safari, excel and mail open so not alot, with maybe itunes and iphoto if i connect my phone/ipod/ipad.

Is there a way I can check if I have a unknown program running as this doesnt seem right?

at the moments its running ok, cpu is 87 idle, ram 2.63 used which i assume sounds normal.

when it running slow. Used system memory is at 3.96 so looks to me like it is running out of ram?

Safari is using 78.0mb but safari web content is at 2.18gb. I only have this apple page open so is that right? and last night with only this page open the total used was only 2.63?

What is the differnce between wired and active

and

free and inactive??

Thanks Dave
 
If you're having performance issues, this may help:

To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.

To understand the difference between free, inactive, wired, etc., read the following:

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
 
You need more RAM. My wife has the Sandy Bridge i5 in her cMBP-13. Both that and our C2D iMac got awfully slow with the 10.8.2 update and I noticed a significant reduction in free memory as well. Upgraded her to 8GB (unfortunately the C2D is maxed out at 4GB) and it made all the difference.

4GB doesn't really cut it for OSX anymore, it's becoming bloatware.
 
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