[Ruahrc]

I just got a new PB and although it has been awesome so far I notice that sometimes it is a little sluggish. It is a 15" 1.3GHz G4 with 256MB RAM and the stock 4200rpm HD.

Sometimes it takes a long time to open applications, I note that there is a lot of HD thrashing when I do so. I assume that this is because the HD is being used as virtual memory?

Also sometimes scrolling in Safari is choppy (i.e. I will hit the space bar and the page will be choppy as it scrolls down to the next page) but only when there are a lot of graphics to display.

Then once I was listening to music in iTunes and I resized my Safari window and the music skipped as if the computer was not powerful enough to handle playing mp3s and redraw the Safari window at the same time.

And then once I was playing one of the GarageBand demo songs and I tried to resize Garageband and it stopped the music saying there were not enough resources to play back the audio in real time.

Are these performance issues due to the low 256MB RAM I have installed? I ordered a 1GB stick from Outpost.com before my PB arrived hoping it would get here on time but it is on backorder so I have to wait a little longer until it arrives. Will these performance issues go away when it does come and I have 1.125GB ram?

Thanks

Ruahrc

[Voch]

I'd definately add some more RAM. Especially if you run more than, say, one application.

Voch

[Tomster]

It is your ram. Your model Powerbook should be able to blast through the tasks you described. You should see massive improvements once your ram gets there.

[MrForgetable]

well, first check your energy settings. i usually just leave itat automatic or customize my own. i'm sure "highest battery life" will impact performance.

my sister's ibook never did that and her's is only a 1GHz, 256MB, 32VRAM machine. she added more RAM for kicks though