[nycdunz]

i have the 17 albook 1Ghz, 512mb ram, 60gb HD, im starting to notice slow downs, when i 1st got the system it was pretty fast at launching apps and stuff, but now i cant even run illustrator cs and photoshop cs without slow downs, its really starting to annoy me, im not sure if its because my HD is full? i have a 60gb divided into 2 partitions of 30GB each and on my main os x drive i have like 3GB left and on the other one i have like 2GB left, not sure if that has anything to do with why my system is slow, or is it the memory.

For those of you who added 1GB to your powerbook making it 1.5GB, do you guys really notice a difference? is it worth $500 to add another 1GB of ram? plz let me know before i make this very expensive choice, I want it to be worth every penny.

Thanks!

[anaphora68]

It sounds like you don't have enough hard drive space and your computer is slowing down due to a lack of real memory and virtual memory.

Why did you partition your hard drive?

[hayesk]

Only 512? Heck, yeah, get more RAM.

Also, anaphora is right. You are running out of scratch space. Photoshop especially uses a lot of disk space when there's not enough RAM inside them.

Clean up that disk, and get at least 512MB more RAM.

[SEkker]

I concur. I think 1 Gig of RAM is essential for photoshop work if you're going to simultaneously do anything else.

And mac os X is especially prone to HD quality -- in your case, your drive is probably highly fragmented. Delete some junk, write a few DVDs, etc. I have 5 Gig available because I am in the middle of a project, and it's really not enough.

I'd add 512 M Ram, at least double your available HD space, and run diskwarrior. You will notice a significant speed improvement.

[cszar2001]

After I installed another 512MB my Powerbook went speed crazy. No more beachballs even with 7-8 apps open at the same time. It`s definitely worth it. You should have at least 5GB free space on your HD or bad things happen.

I bought a 160GB firewire HD and exported any files I don`t use while on the road.

[danbrew]

yeah, free up that hard drive space for the most obvious problem. add 512 for a quick solution as well.

[nobitacu]

Yup, make sure you always have at least 5 gigs of HD space left, and yea, go pick yourself up at least another 512mb ram.

Ming

[sugarkane]

and repair your disk permissions every time you insatll alot or delete alot in fact do it once a week and get your self a copy of xbench and use it too check how fast your pb is runing....

there is no such thing as enough ram!!!!


esp with a RISC chipset laptop!



sk

[Dr.Michael]

Don't guess, measure.

Here is the tool you need. Its called 'Do I need more memory' and tells you, if and how much memory you need and what effects it will have.

Its free.

http://www.hillmanminx.net/dinmm/index.html

I used it on my Powerbook and its really astonishing to see, that all the advices about 1gig or more are (mostly) pointless.

If your system slows down, it can be better advice to get a faster hd, because the hd is the bottleneck in (this time I guess) 85% of all situations.

Michael