[Jazzphone]

Ive had my iBook for about 2 months now and I owned a 600Mhz iBook for a year before my current one. And well I was expecting a lot more with this iBook, The OS It selfs acts kind of slow, Window Resizes and Such, but what really hits me is that when I minimize a window, either genie or scale it stutters. And me seeing this to my eyes is like someone taking a nice and jaming it up my a-hole. Anyone know of a way to speed this thing up? I have a iBook 800 with 384mb of Ram. I would have thought a Radeon 7500 with 32mb of ram could do the genie just fine. But I guess not.

[RMXO]

get more RAM. max it out. its not the video card, its your RAM. try using MacJanitor to free your RAM up.

[Raidiant]

well minimizing doesn't seem to stutter in any way on my 700mhz last generation, rescaling windows does lag like crap though.

[pat++]

That's definitely not normal. Genie effect should be really smooth. Open terminal and launch top, just to see if a weird process is eating up the CPU.

[jokell82]

Runs perfectly fine on my iBook 700 with 384 megs of RAM. Me thinks you are just trolling...

If not, get more ram...

[rytc]

Originally posted by Raidiant:
well minimizing doesn't seem to stutter in any way on my 700mhz last generation, rescaling windows does lag like crap though.

Genie effect is smooth on my iBook 466

[Superchicken]

my iMac 333 256 megs of RAM does a smooth Gennie effect. And that's under OS X.1!
Something's screwed up... installed many sharewares that might have done something? That's all I can think of... I'd personally if my new Mac was behaving that badly, back everything up to another HD and reformat that one. I have no clue how on earth it could stutter with such a light load of work.

[webb3201]

Check another machine at a local retailer and see how the performance compares. If it is similar, then you just have a low tolerance (which is fine) and you should probably look at the 12" Powerbook.

If yours seems slow, try the following:
1. Run Macjanitor (or type "sudo periodic daily") to run the daily cleanup to free ram. You can substitute "weekly" and "monthly" as well.

2. Check your ram by trying another chip

3. Correct your disk permissions in the disk utility.

4. Back your data and reinstall the OS.

5. Have Apple check things for you.

[Colonel Panic]

shouldn't stutter. something is wrong.
my genie effect is very smooth. are you running something seriously hoggin CPU cycles? virex's daemon used to cause my cube's genie to stutter - once i pulled it out of Login Items it was smooth.

[ravenfan]

I disabled the genie effect, the bouncing dock icons, and the mouse shadow because I wanted to tweak a little more performance out of the 'book. It is a bit snappier all the way around and I would recommend these changes to anyone who doesn't need the special effects.

But before I did that, I never had a problem. In fact, the genie effect IS a slight hesitation. It's suposed to do that so's you can "see" it go down the funnel cloud... and that's why I disabled it.

[Jazzphone]

cant afford to replace the ram right now, So I dunno, Ive closed every app and the genie would still stutter, Ive reinstalled X numerous times, still tends to stutter, Seems when a Quit the Dock and it relaunches, Genie works fine for about 30min then stutters again, I just haver the normal iChat, MSN, iRC, and Chimera open. Usually nothing else.

[kybernaut]

Hi Jazzphone, three advices:

1) Run XBench and compare your results with the figures in this thread. That should reveal if something's wrong with your machine.

2) Get rid of the genie effect, app bouncing etc.

3) OS X is still somewhat slow in some regards (scrolling, scaling, menues, heavy multitasking on uniprocessor machines). So the OS is the culprit, not your 800 MHz iBook.

Good Luck!

kybernaut

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by kybernaut:
Hi Jazzphone, three advices:

1) Run XBench and compare your results with the figures in this thread. That should reveal if something's wrong with your machine.

2) Get rid of the genie effect, app bouncing etc.

3) OS X is still somewhat slow in some regards (scrolling, scaling, menues, heavy multitasking on uniprocessor machines). So the OS is the culprit, not your 800 MHz iBook.

Good Luck!

kybernaut

But my old 600 MHz iBook with the same amount of RAM (and worse graphics card, was not even Quartz Extreme supported) was very fluid, no problems, and sounds much faster then his...

[Jazzphone]

got a 48.3 with my iBook, seems normal, But the genie still tends to stutter, but its actually faster now. After doing all the othter stuff you guys told me, Im saving up for ram right now so hopefully that will add some more boost. I just expected a brand new iBook should run OSX as good as a G4 500 does, heh I dunno, my friends G4 550 PowerBook runs OSX Great compared to my iBook. Who knows

[iomatic]

Jazzphone,

A) what does top tell you in Terminal?

B) how much RAM is in your friend's PowerBook?

C) Do you have any third-party pieces of software; i.e., Microsoft Office and mouse drivers, font management, or other types of drivers (I don't think this would cause a slowdown, as I have these things on many machines at work and at home, having lesser specs and the same iBook, albeit with maxed RAM.)

Please let us know.

[Jazzphone]

This is what Top Says

Processes: 45 total, 2 running, 43 sleeping... 99 threads 17:41:58
Load Avg: 1.27, 0.97, 0.84 CPU usage: 30.4% user, 9.8% sys, 59.8% idle
SharedLibs: num = 93, resident = 22.5M code, 2.47M data, 7.01M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 3015, resident = 49.0M + 8.23M private, 63.6M shared
PhysMem: 43.9M wired, 83.6M active, 136M inactive, 264M used, 120M free
VM: 1.67G + 58.6M 7509(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
464 top 7.1% 0:00.90 1 14 17 196K 340K 492K 13.6M
452 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.04 1 10 15 348K 604K 796K 5.73M
451 login 0.0% 0:00.64 1 12 33 244K 392K 576K 13.7M
450 Terminal 0.8% 0:08.11 3 61 128 3.30M 6.58M 7.94M 70.7M
448 Meteorolog 0.0% 0:01.34 1 59 88 1.76M 4.81M 4.09M 65.7M
425 SecurityAg 0.0% 0:00.63 1 53 77 1.06M 5.11M 3.32M 64.7M
424 Fire 0.0% 1:13.96 3 129 229 9.85M 10.7M 15.8M 90.1M
421 iRC 0.0% 0:38.57 4 80 114 2.97M 6.78M 7.13M 69.8M
415 Navigator 31.2% 3:00.25 6 140 314 15.8M 22.3M 31.2M 110M
406 N124U_Butt 0.0% 0:06.56 1 43 50 716K 1.75M 1.78M- 48.9M
405 N067U_Butt 0.0% 0:06.52 1 43 50 716K 1.75M 1.78M- 48.9M
402 Finder 0.0% 0:06.19 1 84 122 3.57M 11.7M 9.31M 75.1M
401 SystemUISe 0.0% 0:01.61 1 140 119 1.88M 5.18M 4.55M 66.9M
400 Dock 0.0% 0:14.70 2 104 115 1.25M 8.99M 6.59M 69.8M
394 pbs 0.0% 0:01.48 2 27 27 408K 976K 1.27M 14.4M
------------------------------

Only Drivers i have are for my Scanner, Canon N670U, My friend has the same ram. 384mb. And Speed updates helps. I found if I disable shadows, font smoothing, use a Low Texture theme that it works fairly well but this makes the OS boring and I didnt use OSX For it to be Boring. So any other ideas?

[tim004]

To Jazzphone:
Some preferences or items in your home folder could be causing some problems. Try creating a new user (go to System Preferences then click on Accounts; click new user). Now login as that new user. Do you still have the problem?

You mention that you have the Canon N670U software installed. I have no idea if that is giving you trouble, but there is a potential issue with the Canon software. It's not the drivers per se; it's the N670U_Button Manager application. This application is installed as a login item and can cause some problems. I was getting repeated kernel panics with this application activated at login. The Button Manager allows you to use the external buttons on the scanner. If they are causing trouble, then creating a new user, as describe above will fix this. If you go to System Preferences and click Login Items, you will be able to see if Button Manager is activated. If it is, simply remove it and see if your problem goes away. The only functionality that is affected is use of the external buttons.

[milhouse]

I highly recommend running DiscWarrior and Plus Optimizer in addition to the other maintenance suggestions.
OS X Frags pretty easily and that really impacts I/O performance.

When I run DW on my MDD and my icebook 700, they feel like new machines afterwards.

I also use renicer on the icebook...makes a nice diff.

HTH

[boots]

I had the same exact thing. I used to have an iBook 600 MHz, then got a 14" 800 MHz. The 800 is really slow in a lot of things by comparison. I defragmented the hard drive, and that helped a lot, then got more ram. That also helped. Strange that the same amount of ram isn't working as well on the 800 as it did on the 600.

[CheesePuff]

Use Safari instead of Navigator? Navigator is eating up 35% CPU while in the background doing nothing...

[Jazzphone]

Using safari now, but it sucks with Genie. Its the reason why I switched to Navigator. I cant afford a degragging program, and I dont know of a Free one. Im pretty close to putting my iBook on eBay.......And buying a PowerMac or something.

[Jazzphone]

I created a new account and Genie works great every time. I wonder if it was a Preference File of somekind that was slowing things up. Or something that I installed like a day ago that messed things up. Everything seems to working great now though. In about 4 hours ill Post again if its acting up .

[mbryda]

Originally posted by Jazzphone:
This is what Top Says

406 N124U_Butt 0.0% 0:06.56 1 43 50 716K 1.75M 1.78M- 48.9M
405 N067U_Butt 0.0% 0:06.52 1 43 50 716K 1.75M 1.78M- 48.9M
------------------------------

Only Drivers i have are for my Scanner, Canon N670U, My friend has the same ram.

Things are working fine on the wife's iBook 800 with 256MB, and I think the machine may be a tad bit faster than my 15" iMac 800....Everything is smooth, including Genie and even after like 20 days of uptime.

One odd thing is you say have the Canon N670U, but you somehow have the N124u and N067u button drivers running. I wonder if maybe that's part of the problem. Something to check...

[boots]

After optimizing my disk, things have improved a lot. My iBook 800 now is more responsive than my iBook 600 was. For some reason, the OS install really fragments the hard drive. I noticed this on my G4 desktop when I first switched to 10. Kinda weird, but I guess defragmenting/optimizing does need to be done under certain circumstances.

[businezguy]

What is the best optimization/disk defragmenting software on the market? It sounds like I can get more performance out of my systems with this kind of software.

[boots]

I'm staying away from Norton. Too many problems reported. I used TechTools Pro. I like the way it optimizes b/c it is pretty safe. It copies files to contiguous free space, then deletes the fragments. When enough space is available, it copies it all back in one block. So, it can be interupted at any time and not screw up the drive. It is a little slower, but safer than Norton.

I've also heard good things about Disk Warrior. Never used it though. Both TechTools and DiskWarrior are OS 9.2.2 apps that work on OS X disks when booted from the CD. OS X native versions will be out later this spring for both. TechTools will send a free upgrade CD (v. 4) to people who are buying the v. 3 package sometime in May. I don't know the timiing of Disk Warrior.

[Simon]

Originally posted by businezguy:
What is the best optimization/disk defragmenting software on the market? It sounds like I can get more performance out of my systems with this kind of software.

I think the majority's opinion is that DiskWarrior is the best. I agree. Norton is a bastard and Drive10 is nice to look at but not very powerful.

Soon there should finally be a DiskWarrior version for native OS X so no more booting in OS 9...