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mr. burns · 08:33 AM

i have a gigabit dual G4 500 machine with 512MB of ram and all the latest OS updates. during the OS 10.2 days it was great. nice and snappy and each new version of OS X seemed to make it better.

i don't really know when exactly this started happening, but i think shortly after 10.3 came out, the machine started getting more and more sluggish with each new update. the HD just seems to churn far too much after closing applications and at various other times like when closing safari tabs and even when it's just sitting idle like it's doing work i didn't tell it to do. itunes skips more during everyday tasks and it NEVER used to skip, even when playing games and using photoshop; i used to brag to PC people about how it would never skip. it seems to happen randomly somtimes and it's finally gotten to the point where i decided to come on here and ask for help.

do i need to defrag the HD or is OS X finally starting to get too bloated for my mac to handle efficiently?

i didn't really know which forum to put this in.

Back up 15 and punt · 11:16 AM

Have you repaired disk permissions? I make it a habit to correct disk permissions before and after I install an update. You can use OS X disk utility to perform this task. It also wouldn't hurt to run something like disk warrior because it does sound like you might have some disk damage beyond permissions.

Buck_Naked · Dec 20, 2003, 01:37 PM

When you did the update did you archive and install or just update??

I would suggest trying the archive and install method.
Worked great for my machine (Dual800)

PS
Your machine could probably use more Ram. Buy yourself at the least 128Meg more memory.

PPS
How old is your HD? Your drive might be failing.

mr. burns · 07:18 PM

i repaired the permissions. i'll see how it goes for a couple days before i try anything else.

the HD is pretty old. it's a 13gig maxtor that came with the PC i had before this mac. i did an archive install when installing 10.2 but updated when going to 10.3. i don't think that should be much of an issue since it ran fine for a while.

i think i'll try to get a new big 7200rpm drive within a month or so, so i can get rid of these two small, slow drives and all my partitions.

Luca Rescigno · Dec 20, 2003, 07:22 PM

Yeah, hard drive speed has a huge impact on performance. That's one of the main reasons why laptops are so much slower than desktops, even with equal stats otherwise.

Look for a 7200 RPM hard drive with 8 MB of cache. Those are fast drives. 80 GB is good, and 120 GB is better. Best price/performance is either 80 GB or 120 GB. Below 80 GB and you're spending maybe $10 or $20 less for half the capacity, and above 120 GB and you're spending significantly more for just a little extra capacity.

mr. burns · Dec 20, 2003, 08:57 PM

80GB will be fine for me. i've been dealing with 30GB for a while and i've still got a lot of space.

powerbook867 · Dec 20, 2003, 09:08 PM

I agree about the ram upgrade. 512 is the minimum I recomend to friends and family. Bump it to a gig as a xmass present to your mac!!

mr. burns · Dec 20, 2003, 09:10 PM

Originally posted by powerbook867:
I agree about the ram upgrade. 512 is the minimum I recomend to friends and family. Bump it to a gig as a xmass present to your mac!!

hehe, i'll have to wait until next month because i already spoiled my mountain bike with christmas presents :]

DBvader · Dec 21, 2003, 12:05 AM

im not so sure about the Gig of RAM. I have a gig in my powermac and rarely in Menu Meters do i see more than 512 MB saturated. I have to be doing a lot of things for it to get anywhere near there. Dont get more RAM for the sake of getting more RAM. Get more if what you have is easily saturated by what you do.

But the HD upgrade sounds good, plus they are fantastically cheap lately. I would just get a new HD, install Panther, and copy things over from your Old HD, and youll be in business.