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bishopazrael · Oct 31, 2007, 12:49 PM

So I've shown my MBP to my friends. We're sitting around drinking coffee and yakkin' about Leopard. I've got a 2ghz Intel Core Duo, not the core 2 duo. I've got 2gb of RAM. What really boggles my friends and I is that, sure.. it's OK, but when Steve demo's a mac on stage, his stuff FLIES... for example... on mine, when I open firefox, it takes about 20 seconds and 5 to 8 dock bounces. WTF is up with that? Mail? 4 dock bounces. Itunes? 3 or 4. Is this normal? Or is there something wrong? Im already as we speak backing up my user folder to my firewire drive and I'm gonna wipe the whole drive and reinstall leopard. Is there anywhere I can turn up the speed of the chips? Seems to me I remember somewhere a setting can be switched to turn off one of the processors for heat issues or something.

Thanks for the help... (or just telling me I'm crazy)

Black_Rain · Oct 31, 2007, 12:56 PM

well i think the demos used by jobs and all the tutorial videos are using the FASTEST system config you can get...maybe even modifying or already having the programs running before the camera starts to roll

but i stopped using firefox because i think its too heavy of a browser and takes longer to load, and safari suits my needs...and takes half the time to load...

i typically keep my programs running whenever my computer is on...so i dont start the apps from a dead quit very often, maybe you should try...

but IF i do start them from a blank slate...it takes maybe a little shorter than that...20 seconds for firefox is a lot... maybe you were exaggerating, but mine i would GUESS takes much shorter than 20 seconds... mail/safari take around 3 bounces and itunes about 3 then some lag b4 it actually opens fully

i'm on a 2.16ghz 1g RAM c2d 15"

soon to be 3gigs of ram after tonight...i'll update this thread with my makeshift clocking lol

mfbernstein · Oct 31, 2007, 05:21 PM

A clean install on a near-empty disk is typically substantially faster than normal usage.

If you really care about app launch times, get a faster disk, and keep it mostly empty. Also, make sure to use apps that are well-designed and optimized for OS X. Firefox is never going to open as quickly as Safari or Camino for instance.

No, you can't 'turn up the speed' of the chips, at least not without a lot of work and voiding your warranty. You can disable/enable the second core through System Preferences if you install the CHUD tools, but that doesn't help your problem.

If you want to see fast, try vMac, the Mac Plus emulator, on your current machine. It's a nice reminder how far we've come...

Fusion · Nov 1, 2007, 06:46 AM

Demos will always seem faster, thats just how it is. A clean install is a great idea, I personally do it about 2 or 3 times a year just to clean things out and get teh snappy back...

Most likely for a demo, they fire up the app, quit it, and then when the demo hits bring it back up again...

zaghahzag · Nov 3, 2007, 11:04 AM

if your disk is mostly full, the speed will suffer.

also, a newer faster HD will make a lot of difference. It sounds like the HD in your system is the bottleneck.

MrNo · Nov 3, 2007, 01:26 PM

I would say something is wrong with your setup.
I have a 1.83GHz Core Duo MBP with 2GB of RAM and Firefox takes couple of seconds to load the first time, and then it is instantaneous. Mail takes a second or less. No bounces here ...

zaghahzag · Nov 3, 2007, 02:01 PM

maybe you have a 4200 rpm drive. Go to the system profiler and see what kind of drive you have. maybe its a POS.

aaron6166 · Nov 3, 2007, 10:45 PM

Try this:

1) Fire up firefox. Time it until the window shows up.
2) Quit firefox.
3) Fire it up again. Time it again. Much faster.

Mmmmm.... caching...

What I can't explain for certain is how it got even faster the third time (instant load - kinda like the demos you speak of). Maybe the cache considers frequency of access...

bballe336 · Nov 3, 2007, 11:41 PM

I have the same machine. In tiger safari and mail both open in less than a bounce, they get about halway through the bounce and the window is up. What hard drive do you have? I have the 120gig 5400rpm drive.

Ozmodiar · Nov 4, 2007, 01:46 PM

I'm running Tiger on a 400 MHz TiBook with 512 MB of RAM, and my iTunes, Safari, and Mail all load in about 2 bounces. Photoshop, Coda, and Transmit all take about twice as long. System Preferences is less than one bounce.

bishopazrael · Nov 4, 2007, 04:20 PM

OK in system profiler I don't see anything about speed. But yeah... i think my hdd is part of the problem... it's making sounds that sound like it needs to be RPL'd. Anyone have a walk through or pics of how to replace the HDD in this lappy?

Ozmodiar · Nov 4, 2007, 05:05 PM

OWC has installation videos.

Tech Center at OtherWorldComputing.com

They used to have step-by-step guides but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

mfbernstein · Nov 4, 2007, 10:03 PM

It's not that difficult to replace, but you may void your warranty if you do it yourself. Instructions here. Also, go to an Apple store and play around with a high-end Mac Pro. You may discover that some things just aren't particularly fast on Macs in general.

bballe336 · Nov 4, 2007, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Ozmodiar

I'm running Tiger on a 400 MHz TiBook with 512 MB of RAM, and my iTunes, Safari, and Mail all load in about 2 bounces. Photoshop, Coda, and Transmit all take about twice as long. System Preferences is less than one bounce.

I don't believe that at all. I have used TiBooks with tiger on them and they are nowhere near that fast, to be honest they are quite slow.

Ozmodiar · Nov 5, 2007, 02:58 AM

Originally Posted by bballe336

I don't believe that at all. I have used TiBooks with tiger on them and they are nowhere near that fast, to be honest they are quite slow.

Believe what you want. Before I made that post I opened the apps I mentioned and counted the bounces. I don't know what else to tell you.

Waragainstsleep · Nov 5, 2007, 06:47 PM

Snappiness is weird. The snappiest system I ever used was a PowerMac G5. Dual 2.5GHz, not sure the RAM but around 2GB or so at most. It was running Panther. It was so quick, it seemed like it was psychic. When we upgraded it to Tiger, it slowed alot.

bballe336 · Nov 5, 2007, 08:45 PM

Originally Posted by Ozmodiar

Believe what you want. Before I made that post I opened the apps I mentioned and counted the bounces. I don't know what else to tell you.

Is this after the apps have been running or from a cold start? Because there is no chance it loads anything up that quickly right after booting.

nickclarson · Nov 5, 2007, 09:51 PM

that's really weird, because I just have a macbook but after upgrading to Leopard everything was running faster!

tkmd · Nov 6, 2007, 11:29 PM

Yeah thats weird something is slowing down your machine- try running an app like menu meters to monitor cpu use - if its constantly up theres your problem.

Safari opens for me (this on a 1.5 g4 Al PB) in about 2-3 bounces in Leopard - but I think the engineers created an illusion here because in leopard the bounce stops but the app is still loading. This is after a boot to - so no cache. I agree about firefox - on leopard it loads much more slowly.

JoshuaZ · Nov 7, 2007, 12:30 AM

Even on my old 1.33 G4 things would pop up rather snappy. Something has got to be sucking up your CPU power somewhere. Maybe you just need to take some time one day and erase your HD, and reinstall everything. If all else fails, install things one by one until your system slows down.