[tictactoe]

I'm not sure what it is, but my Powerbook is slow in everyday applications. It seems as if it hesitates to do things. Specs:

Powerbook 15"
G4 1.5ghz
1.5gb ram
80gig hard drive
64mb ATI

Whenever I open a new tab in Safari or switch between tabs, there is always a delay that drives me insane. On my desktop PC that I sold (3ghz p4, 1gig ram), whenever I clicked between tabs it was instant. I've tried Safari and Firefox, and they both seem to do this. There is also a delay in Microsoft Office (when I click on menus and such) and other small delays that I'm noticing.

Is this normal?

[tictactoe]

Excuse the 3 identical threads, Safari hiccuped.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
I'm not sure what it is, but my Powerbook is slow in everyday applications. It seems as if it hesitates to do things. Specs:

Powerbook 15"
G4 1.5ghz
1.5gb ram
80gig hard drive
64mb ATI

Whenever I open a new tab in Safari or switch between tabs, there is always a delay that drives me insane. On my desktop PC that I sold (3ghz p4, 1gig ram), whenever I clicked between tabs it was instant. I've tried Safari and Firefox, and they both seem to do this. There is also a delay in Microsoft Office (when I click on menus and such) and other small delays that I'm noticing.

Is this normal?

How long have you had your Powerbook? Did this delay just start to appear recently? How many tabs do you usually have open at one time?

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that maybe your Powerbook isn't able to access all of your RAM. Go to your system profiler and verify that your system recognizes that you do indeed have 1.5 GB.

[romeosc]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
I'm not sure what it is, but my Powerbook is slow in everyday applications. It seems as if it hesitates to do things. Specs:

Powerbook 15"
G4 1.5ghz
1.5gb ram
80gig hard drive
64mb ATI

Whenever I open a new tab in Safari or switch between tabs, there is always a delay that drives me insane. On my desktop PC that I sold (3ghz p4, 1gig ram), whenever I clicked between tabs it was instant. I've tried Safari and Firefox, and they both seem to do this. There is also a delay in Microsoft Office (when I click on menus and such) and other small delays that I'm noticing.

Is this normal?

I run a TIPB 500 with 1GB and have no delay in tasks you mention. Run Activity viewer or "Cunning Fox" to see what is robbing you of processor cycles.

[Randman]

In Safari, deactivate your cache and lock your favicons folder. If you have autofill on, turn off "others" or keep it pared to a minimum. See how those can help. Oh, and pithhelmet does a good job of controlling animated gifs and other advertising detritus that can slow a page down.

[chrisutley]

Try FireFox ... Safari was bugging out on me, slowing down, and not particularly zippy in the first place. I'm hoping the new Safari with Tiger will resolve these issues, but for now FireFox has been working great for me.

[tictactoe]

Originally posted by SpaceMonkey:
How long have you had your Powerbook? Did this delay just start to appear recently? How many tabs do you usually have open at one time?

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that maybe your Powerbook isn't able to access all of your RAM. Go to your system profiler and verify that your system recognizes that you do indeed have 1.5 GB.

I've had my Powerbook about two weeks. The delay has always been there (as far as I can remember). I usually have one window with 2-3 tabs open. The system profiler shows 1.5gb of ram as well.

I ran Onyx to see if anything needed cleaning, but that didn't help either.

I run a TIPB 500 with 1GB and have no delay in tasks you mention. Run Activity viewer or "Cunning Fox" to see what is robbing you of processor cycles.

Safari is robbing me of my processing cycles!

In Safari, deactivate your cache and lock your favicons folder. If you have autofill on, turn off "others" or keep it pared to a minimum. See how those can help. Oh, and pithhelmet does a good job of controlling animated gifs and other advertising detritus that can slow a page down.

I turned autofill off completely, but I don't know how to deactivate my cache and lock my favicons folder.

I get the same thing with Firefox too

[joe]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
I've had my Powerbook about two weeks. The delay has always been there (as far as I can remember). I usually have one window with 2-3 tabs open. The system profiler shows 1.5gb of ram as well.
<snip>
I get the same thing with Firefox too

I have the nearly identical setup (month old PowerBook, 1.5GB RAM, 80GB HD, Office 2004, etc). If this is your 1st notebook computer, there are a few things you may not be aware of that can increase performance significantly:

- Make sure you're plugged in and using the AC power adapter.
- Open the System Preferences (Blue Apple top left)
- Click on the Energy Saver icon in Hardware section
- Notice the presets for Optimizing Energy settings for Battery and Power Adapter.
- Choose Power Adapter, and then click "Highest Performance" above.
- next go to the Options tab and change the Processor Power from "Automatic" to "Highest"

You should notice a significant improvement now when plugged into AC. I woudln't recommend choosing the same settings for Battery because you'll loose run time. However, you can try the different presets or use Custom to strike a balance between performance and battery life that works for you.

Here are some other places to look in case it's not related to the Energy Saver:
- is the slowdown only with certain web sites?
- did it occur after installing an application, utility, or plugin?
- are you running a cpu-heavy task in the background (video edit, number crunching, etc)?
- did you recently install a printer or try to print to a network printer?
- are you running Norton anti-virus (it's a resource hog even on PC)

Personally, I use TOP whenever I'm trying to find out what may be loading down my cpu. The reason is because I ran into a problem last year with a printer driver that was using a lot of cpu time - but didn't show up in the Activity Viewer. Top sees a helluva lot more than the Activity Monitor and found the culprit immediately.

One final thought, I've been using notebooks for years now - mostly PC. They're always slower than desktops/towers mainly due to the 2.5" hard drives and compromises made to increase battery life. I go back and forth betweeen Towers and notebooks all day long so I'm use to it But if this is your 1st notebook the difference may be more noticeable. Having said that, our new PowerBooks use 5400rpm drives. Believe me these are a HUGE step up from the previous 4200rpm drives especially because of the swap files in OSX and XP. Between the 1.5GB RAM and faster 5400rpm hard drive my PowerBook seems downright fast on AC power.

Good luck. Let us know if you find the problem.
regards........joe

[tictactoe]

Thanks for the replies.

Joe, I already had the performance set to "highest" and used TOP to see what was running. When it happens, I'm usually doing nothing but browsing the internet. I never do any audio or video editing, so that's not the case either.

I need to go use my friend's 12" PB and see if his does the same thing.

[Randman]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
I turned autofill off completely, but I don't know how to deactivate my cache and lock my favicons folder.

A quick search would come up with answers. TinkerTool and Safari Enhancer can help.

[Dr.Michael]

tictactoe,

this IS normal. Compared to windows or linux the apple gui applications react some tenth of a second slower. This is the trade off for a very sophisticated eye candy rendering machine (Quartz).

You can easily compare with classic applications and will find that they do react instantly. Just download an old Netscape version that runs on OS 9 and start it in classic mode. Thus you can check yourself: it is not your powerbook it is OS X.

[Randman]

It's not the OS unless the draggyness happens in many apps. And with that much ram, it shouldn't. If narrowed down to Safari, try Firefox if you don't want to try the tips I mentioned above.
You could also try deleting the font cache as Panther's font management is weak. Trashing the Safari plist or resetting Safari is also something to consider (backup your bookmarks first).

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by Randman:
It's not the OS unless the draggyness happens in many apps. And with that much ram, it shouldn't. If narrowed down to Safari, try Firefox if you don't want to try the tips I mentioned above.
You could also try deleting the font cache as Panther's font management is weak. Trashing the Safari plist or resetting Safari is also something to consider (backup your bookmarks first).

Tictactoe mentioned that it also happens in firefox and M$ office. This has nothing to do with memory (except video memory maybe because aqua is open gl rendered). All these cache operations are useless on a new powerbook. Windows has also full caches and it slows down because of this. But caches and gui resonsiveness is completely unrelated.

An unresponsive gui is built in OS X. If you work with linux, windows and Mac OS simultaneously you will notice this at a first glance. And it is nearly the same on a dual processor powermac and on an 1ghz iBook.
Only if the delay is more than a few tenth of a second (say .5 or 1 second or more) the reasons maybe found somewhere else. Then the first thing to look at is processor load. If it is > 95% responsiveness goes down.

It is not unlikely that a website opened in Safari needs a lot of processor load if it includes animations, scripts and all these things. Firefox is indeed a better choice. Word on the other hand has the famous (notorious) grammar correction and spellchecker. That should be switched off. Especially if you use english and the spellchecker tries to check for another language it degrades performance magnificiently. It is useless but possible (thanks to M$ great project management).

[jamil5454]

Dr. Michael is right on the money here. It's because of OS X's rendering engine that things feel slow, but I assure you it's normal. You'll get used to it in a couple more weeks, so don't worry. Besides, you don't really NEED that extra 1/10 of a second, do you? OS X still lets you get your work accomplished faster than windows (once you learn how to use it of course).

[Paco500]

I have no solutions, but I dispute that this is normal. I am sitting in front of a last generation Powerbook, 15", 1.33 GHz, 1.5 GB RAM, and a Dell Latitude D600 running XP.

I have been sitting here like an idiot for the past five min changing tabs (same sites on each, 11 open) on each machine and if there is a lag on the PB, it's imperceptible. There are some areas that the Mac GUI is marginally, but noticably, less responsive than WinXP on the machine, and the Dell blows the PB out of the water in WoW, but I can't see anything in safari- at least not chaging tabs.

I have heard from time to time that it is reccomened that one immediately do a clean install of the OS on a new Mac as the factory loaded one can sometimes have issues. Maybe you could try that, but what a pain in the behind.

EDIT:

I'm running Safari on the Mac and Firefox on the Dell.

[gururafiki]

Originally posted by Paco500:
I have no solutions, but I dispute that this is normal.

I completely agree. I do not experience any lag in my everyday use, although I do have quite a bit of RAM in each of my machines. But 1.5gigs should be enough to where there should not be a problem. Like Paco suggested, try reinstalling everything the OS.

[Agent69]

No, it is not normal in my experience either, and I have run Panther on a 700mhz eMac and my current Mac, a single processor 1.25ghz G4.

Personally, I would recommend backing up your data and reinstalling from scratch, particularly if you are still running on the install that came from the factory.

[SEkker]

Obvious potential problems:

1) is your HD full, or nearly full, or has been nearly full (even transiently in a iDVD project, etc)? That can be a real problem. Make sure you have at least 5 GB free, and run diskwarrior. That can help quite a bit.

2) Do you have tons of files on your desktop? I've twice noticed that too many files can be a real drag on the system, even with 1 GB of RAM installed. To avoid this, I have aliases to project folders rather than store any complex work files.

3) The lag you describe is NOT normal.

4) I do not find Firefox to be faster than Safari, and a true comparison was recently posted confirming that Firefox is faster in some tasks, Safari in most others.

There IS some noticable and really unnecessary lag in OS X, due to an unfulfilled and overambitious CPU schedule by moto -- I am convinced the Apple os x software developers were originally told that the target machines would be at least 1 GHz G4 models for os x 10.2, but Apple instead had to back off and make Panther to allow OS X to be ok on slower machines. A topic for another thread, perhaps!

[tictactoe]

Originally posted by SEkker:
Obvious potential problems:

1) is your HD full, or nearly full, or has been nearly full (even transiently in a iDVD project, etc)? That can be a real problem. Make sure you have at least 5 GB free, and run diskwarrior. That can help quite a bit.

2) Do you have tons of files on your desktop? I've twice noticed that too many files can be a real drag on the system, even with 1 GB of RAM installed. To avoid this, I have aliases to project folders rather than store any complex work files.

3) The lag you describe is NOT normal.

4) I do not find Firefox to be faster than Safari, and a true comparison was recently posted confirming that Firefox is faster in some tasks, Safari in most others.

There IS some noticable and really unnecessary lag in OS X, due to an unfulfilled and overambitious CPU schedule by moto -- I am convinced the Apple os x software developers were originally told that the target machines would be at least 1 GHz G4 models for os x 10.2, but Apple instead had to back off and make Panther to allow OS X to be ok on slower machines. A topic for another thread, perhaps!

1) Hard drive has more than 50% free
2) 3 files on my desktop
3)

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
1) Hard drive has more than 50% free
2) 3 files on my desktop
3)

tictactoe,
obviously we have different opinions.

Can you specify how long the delays are?
Is it click - and not an instant reaction?
Or is it click - wait a second, nothing happens, done?

[jamil5454]

Well, I've been a PC user for about the last five years and about a year ago I acquired an Athlon64 box. Now, if you want fast, that's fast. But, even with my old AthlonXP 1800+, XP was still extremely Snappy�. I could hardly notice a difference between the Athlon64 and the AthlonXP.

And then my iBook shipped. Granted, the iBook has a 1.2ghz processor which, in my understanding, is about equivalent to my AthlonXP 1800+. It also has a 4200rpm disk and 32mb of VRAM. But I've used PCs with similar specs running 2000/XP and OS X still felt slower.

It took me about three weeks to get used to the lack of Snappiness� within OS X. It was really just the little things:

-There was a fraction of second lag right after depressing/clicking a button until the button actually turned blue then gray again.
-Resizing windows was REALLY laggy (compared to windows at least). But this isn't a problem since I rarely resize windows.
-Menu scrolling is a little unresponsive (I have to wait for it to "catch up").
-All scroll bars in general are slower.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I absolutely love OS X. I wouldn't use anything else. But you have to admit that there ARE noticeable lags here and there within the GUI. However, you get used to them after a few weeks so after that it's hard to tell a difference.

And if you still don't agree with me and you need proof, try installing Debian or Yellow Dog on your Apple and see how responsive the GUI is then.

Finally, I realize that Apple built OS X with the future in mind. This means that OS X with scale with future hardware for the next ~10 years (correct me if I'm wrong). Thus OS X will only get Snappier� as the hardware and software continue to improve.

But I'm not saying nothing's (double negative!) with your machine. Since OS X isn't perfect, there definitely could be something wrong. But chances are that since you're new to OS X, it is probably that you're not used to the level of resonsiveness.

[Agent69]

Something else to try is to create a secondary user, log in as that user, and see if the problem persists. If it does, then at least you will know it is system wide and not a problem with your particular user account.

[Randman]

I'd suggest doing a clean install and seeing if the situations picks up any.

[Garage81]

sort of unrelated, but Tiger should help the rendering speed right? the 9700 in the new powerbooks should really scream with Tiger, right?

[pat++]

Yes Tiger should indeed help. From what I've been told, Quartz has undergone a lot of optimizations thanks to Quartz Extreme 2D and Core Image.

[tictactoe]

This is how I can best describe it:

I click, there is a half second pause, then it switches tabs.


I guess I'll try a clean install when I get a chance and see if that helps, but I'll try the different user thing first.

[iREZ]

Are you sure it's a half second. When saying the phrase "one one-thousand" (this is the equivalent of an actual second), a half a second would take the end of the first two words "one one". If your tabs are taking that long, then there is something definitely wrong with the system. I know this all sounds asinine but I just want to make sure your half second is indeed half a second.

[Krauti]

Do you use a trackpad tap to click or do you use the actual trackpad button? I found the same lag in switching tabs and clicking UI elements only when using a tap to click.

Hint: you can cycle tabs in Safari using Apple-Shift-Arrow (left or right). It's absolutely instantaneous for me (PowerBook 1.67).

[Spliff]

Originally posted by Randman:
In Safari, deactivate your cache and lock your favicons folder. If you have autofill on, turn off "others" or keep it pared to a minimum. See how those can help. Oh, and pithhelmet does a good job of controlling animated gifs and other advertising detritus that can slow a page down.

Safari sucks balls. It's gotten progressively slower since Apple released it. You have to disable it's useful features just to get it to run properly. And it chokes on Flash animations and animated gifs. It's lame. I use Mozilla. More configurable, faster, and less of a CPU hog.

There's my rant. Back to the topic.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
This is how I can best describe it:

I click, there is a half second pause, then it switches tabs.


I guess I'll try a clean install when I get a chance and see if that helps, but I'll try the different user thing first.

If it is really that short I assure you that a new user and a clean install will have no result.

But feel free to try and see yourself.

jamil5454 wrote a very good description. OS X feels slower because the gui is slow. That does not mean OS X is slow. If you compare number crunching jobs with xp or linux, os x does a good and absolutely comparable job. It is only the gui that sucks speedwise.

[Link]

I'd suggest trying a g4 optimized build of camino -- if you don't like firefox that is, it's much more responsive than safari.

[tictactoe]

It literally takes .5 seconds to switch between tabs. I know this sounds like no big deal, but it gets on my nerves from time to time.

Also, it makes no difference whether I use my mouse or trackpad.

[iREZ]

We'll I can't say it's software seeing how I don't suffer from it. Either some crappy software installed on your machine, or hardware. Have you checked if your running on highest processor settings? Maybe an Archive and Install is in order. Sorry to hear about your troubls TTT.

[shabbasuraj]

Is it only slow when you wish to switch tabs and the tab you are switching to is still rendering the page?

If this is the case, my machine does this also. RevC 12" and I believe this is normal. However when switching tabs to 'tabs' that have already finished rendering the web page then things are more or less instantaneous.

[joe]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
Thanks for the replies.
Joe, I already had the performance set to "highest" and used TOP to see what was running. When it happens, I'm usually doing nothing but browsing the

If it's only happening when browsing, does it happen after hitting certain web sites? If so, do they use a particular plug-in (flash, real, iPix, etc)?

I haven't run into a tab switching slow down so far. And I really push the multiple tabs thing on certain web sites like cycletrader.com. If you can narrow it down a bit, I'll try to dulpicate it on my PowerBook at work. Best of luck........joe

[trip]

Not an expert, but I'm thinking a 1.5 ghz with 1.5 gb ram should out perform my blueberry g3 (with osx).

Maybe it's a defective machine ? bad ram ? did you install extra non-apple ram ?

[tictactoe]

It doesn't matter what the website is or what the content is (lots of pics vs. no pics), it still takes the same amount of time to switch between tabs .

[chris v]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
It literally takes .5 seconds to switch between tabs. I know this sounds like no big deal, but it gets on my nerves from time to time.

Also, it makes no difference whether I use my mouse or trackpad.

For what it's worth, I am absolutely not having this issue on a 1.25 ghz powerbook with 1 gb of RAM. Safari changes tabs instantly, even when it's loading a page in the tab I'm switching out of. You could also try downloading Cocktail, clearing all the caches (could be font cache or recent servers cache. I've had recent servers really bog down the Finder and Terminal before) and restarting before you proceed with a Nuke/Pave.

Incidentally, I do agree with doing a wipe and re-install on newly-purchased hardware, anyway. Work your way carefully through the options and you can save almost 3 gig of hd space by not installing unnecessary printer drivers and language packages.

[tictactoe]

Alright. I ran Cocktail and that seemed to help a little bit. I decided the best way for you guys to see what I'm talking about is to see it in action. Granted, when I tried to recreate the problem, it wasn't nearly as bad (rolls eyes), but it will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

In my video, you'll see that once the tabs are loaded, I can switch between them quickly, but this is not always the case.

Here it is (option-click):

www.unfinite.com/slowtabs.mov

Edit: I'm on a 4mbit cable connection by the way.

Edit #2: The video is at 30fps. You can see that some of my clicks were delayed a few seconds altogether.

[drprat]

i experience similar sluggishness, including the choppy scrolling... mail is an example of where scrolling can be quite sluggish... granted i always have many apps open (acrobat pro, word, excel, powerpoint, mail, itunes, msn, safari) it seems as the os x interface can be sluggish at times.... when i monitor my cpu/memory usage in activity monitor it's always the same apps that are the culprit... apps such as word that make use of cpu cycles even when nothing's open... or safari, which can be a major memory whore or slow down the cpu if animated banners happen to be loaded... and back to the original topic, tabs can be quite unresponsive if pages are loading or quite a few of them are up....

i guess i may just have been spoiled by the mac way of things (all the multitasking and such), but overall the os x interface is slightly less responsive than windows in my experience... i guess it's a small price to pay though for such a dynamic and beautiful os...

o yea, specs: pb 12" rev C, 768mb ram, 60gig... i know, i really push this thing when it comes to apps...

[davidsi]

thats weird. my ibook doesnt do taht. id get it checked out

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by tictactoe:


www.unfinite.com/slowtabs.mov

With this wild and pointless zapping around while pages are still loading a little delay is unavoidable.

For a mac application safari is quite responsive on your powerbook. I don't see the point why you are complaining and let people spend time finding a solution for a problem that does not exist.

[tictactoe]

Originally posted by Dr.Michael:
With this wild and pointless zapping around while pages are still loading a little delay is unavoidable.

For a mac application safari is quite responsive on your powerbook. I don't see the point why you are complaining and let people spend time finding a solution for a problem that does not exist.

I explained that I was having a hard time recreating the problem. I did all that "wild and pointless zapping around" in order to demonstrate what I'm talking about. That half second delay is what I experience quite often.

I guess I'll just deal with it.

Thanks for the help.

[Garage81]

well, for that its worth, i thought it was cool you made the movie.

[tictactoe]

Originally posted by Garage81:
well, for that its worth, i thought it was cool you made the movie.

Thanks

[joe]

Originally posted by tictactoe:
...In my video, you'll see that once the tabs are loaded, I can switch between them quickly, but this is not always the case.

I was able to get a similar delay by doing an "Open in tabs' for one of my Safari bookmark folders. And then clicking on as many tabs as possible as fast as I could. After a dozen clicks or so I noticed some of the tabs were delayed. IE - the mouse itself was able to move and click but the last tab would stay highlighted for about a half second which would prevent me from selecting / clicking on one of the remaining tabs. If this is what you're describing then it happens here too. But if I understand you correctly, this is more of a simulation of the problem - and not the actual problem itself.

To define the problem, the delay happens in casual browsing and not just when your intentionally trying to push the limits. Also, the delay is usually much longer than a half second. So what could cause your notebook to delay for a few seconds on occasion, yet work normally the rest of the time? The only possibility I can think of is if your hard drive is recalibrating the heads more than normal. One way to check is to try to limit the ambient noise in the room and listen for some sort of hard drive noises (mechanical whoosh / clicking sound) the next time this pause occurs. If it is the hard drive recalibrating, you may be able to claim it as defective and have it replaced.

If you don't hear any head recalibration noises or you find that it isn't the hard drive, I'd try an intense RAM test application next. Not the RAM test from the Apple hardware disk either. I've read complaints that it doesn't catch as many problem RAM modules as some of the free/shareware ram testers on versiontracker.com. I've seen bad RAM pass the Apple hardware disc tests and cause some flakey behavior on Macs. regards........joe

[tictactoe]

Joe, I'll check for hard drive noises and run a ram tester and see if that turns up anything.

Thanks for the advice

[shabbasuraj]

After watching your video it seems that the delay you are referring to is normal.

[iREZ]

That is normal and no way near .5 seconds. Switching while a page is loading might take half a second but what your experiencing there is pretty normal usage. If it's too slow, try Firefox.

[tictactoe]

Originally posted by iREZ:
That is normal and no way near .5 seconds. Switching while a page is loading might take half a second but what your experiencing there is pretty normal usage. If it's too slow, try Firefox.

Firefox is just the same