Stock 15" 1.5GHZ Powerbook is slow!

[crazydreaming]

I've been using my new 15" Powerbook for almost a month now.

I haven't been too impressed with the speed for day to day tasks. Maybe I just have too much going at once, too many widgets maybe?? Anyway, things will run smooth, but there is frequent bottle necks, everything will sorta stop. My dashboard is extremely slow, sometimes takes many seconds to come up especially the first time after waking from sleep, other times it freezes half way... I do have a lot of widgets though.

I'm assuming it's RAM. I plan on buying a 1Gig stick as soon as I recover from paying for this thing and get some more money to spend on computer stuff. (I'm in college). Then I'll have 1.5 GB . (Anyone know a good place to go?)

Today I looked at my system stats, and saw that I'm running 9.55 GB of virtual memory

I only have 7.68 MB of ram free. I'm running itunes, mail, ichat, calendar, and word.

I'm just a little dissapointed. Wish things could be zippy without dropping another $120 + down. Wondering if there's anything I can do???

What happened to the days when 512MB Ram was a lot?
Thanks!

 

[7254278]

512 used to be good for jaguar and decent with panther but for tiger you need atleast 768 to let it run fine, the ram requirments go up with every OS release and the biggest step up was from panther to tiger.

 

[capone2]

It all depends....

....on so many things, how much software installed, how many programs running at once and Mfst Office tends to take up alot of ram and speed, especially excel and powerpoint.

i have the 1.5gig 17'' with 1Gram and its going very smooth and can take alot.

Mac eats ram like crazy and Tiger is very hungry!

 

[lfielder06]

I have the 15" 1.5ghz model as well, but I have 1.5gb of ram. This thing is great. I am coming from an 867mhz pb so I know slow. I can run word safari iphoto and itunes with out any slow downs. I have a ram monitor and am usually at high 90% usage, but as stated many times, Tiger will use as much ram as you can put in it. I think that ram will fix your problem. Get at least one gig and two if you have the money. I got a gig of crucial from newegg.com for around $120 after shipping. I think it cost more now, but I would recomend newegg.

 

[dxm113]

take a look and see how much RAM dashboard is eating . . .you may be surprised.


One time I checked my dashboard RAM usage, and the widgets that were running were using about 250Mb of RAM.

Also, check to see if you have a "bad" (cant think of the word here) widget. I've had a few widgets that somehow "crashed" and ate almost all available RAM, degrading my POWERbook to a WIMPYbook.

 

[crazydreaming]

take a look and see how much RAM dashboard is eating . . .you may be surprised.


One time I checked my dashboard RAM usage, and the widgets that were running were using about 250Mb of RAM.

Also, check to see if you have a "bad" (cant think of the word here) widget. I've had a few widgets that somehow "crashed" and ate almost all available RAM, degrading my POWERbook to a WIMPYbook.

I'll have to check the dashboard. That's seems to be the biggest problem area... But, after all these replies, I'm realize I really should get more ram.

Is there a way to turn Dashboard off?

 

[Ti_Poussin]

I'll have to check the dashboard. That's seems to be the biggest problem area... But, after all these replies, I'm realize I really should get more ram.

Is there a way to turn Dashboard off?

Just don't lauch it, remove any key to activated it. Dashboard doesn't load at startup, if it already running, use activity monitor and kill the dock process, it will quit all widget.

 

[crazydreaming]

OK OK

What the hey. I just pulled up the Crucial 1GB Stick of Ram on Newegg.com for $123 U.S. Shipped... Very Tempting all of the sudden. I'm starting to think. It's something I'm going to end up doing down the road anyway, I plan on keeping this laptop for my 4 years in college at least, should I just bite the bullet and go for it now and enjoy it now? It's not like RAM will go down a huge amount over the next few months...

As long as I'll be blown away with the new performance of my Powerbook, it's worth it. Just $123 seem like a lot of money to me.

 

[Cfly]

OK OK

What the hey. I just pulled up the Crucial 1GB Stick of Ram on Newegg.com for $123 U.S. Shipped... Very Tempting all of the sudden. I'm starting to think. It's something I'm going to end up doing down the road anyway, I plan on keeping this laptop for my 4 years in college at least, should I just bite the bullet and go for it now and enjoy it now? It's not like RAM will go down a huge amount over the next few months...

As long as I'll be blown away with the new performance of my Powerbook, it's worth it. Just $123 seem like a lot of money to me.

123 is nothing, i wish i could get a gig for 150 up here in canada.

 

[crazydreaming]

so should I go ahead and hit the 'check out' button?

 

[Cfly]

so should I go ahead and hit the 'check out' button?

ya and get me one while your at it and send it across the border

 

[crazydreaming]

Lol, my grandparents live right over the boarder from me in St. Catherines ON. They have most of their mail delivered to my house...