Is Your Mac Running Slow ???

Nothing is more frustrating than a Mac running slow - well, almost nothing.

Face it, we have all been spoiled by cable and dsl - we are used to speed. So when our Apple computer turns sluggish - working on it becomes very painful.

Recently I had an issue where every time I moved the cursor I would get the little spinning beach ball. If I typed any characters the beach ball would appear and after a few second lag my letters would show up. This would happen EVERY TIME I TYPED A WORD. Excuse me for shouting - but the memories are that vivid. Kind of like a bad dream.

Anyway - it was time for a little troubleshooting. Something that I really don't like to do. And while there are many pluses to having an iMac over a MacBook - the downside is that you just can't throw it into a laptop bag and haul it down to the genius bar.

There are many causes to a Mac running slow. But usually - the culprit can stem from any of these things:

1. Too little RAM
2. Too little available hard drive space
3. Unrepaired disk permissions

Too Little RAM

I figured I should start here - because I often have many programs running at once and I like to keep of lots Firefox tabs open while I work, as well.

So I ventured into my Mac utility software and started with the Activity Monitor (Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor).

In the Activity Monitor (most of which is Greek to me - and I don't know any Greek in case you were wondering) I switched to the System Memory view.

I really didn't think this would be where my issue lied because I have 4GB of memory installed on my machine. That should be more than enough, right?

Surprisingly almost all of my system memory was being used. Even though I closed almost all of my open programs - Firefox was eating up a ton of space and then there were a lot of systems being run in the background. I run growl notifiers, and dropbox, and Hazel, and Blast, and a bunch of other "always on" type programs that individually don't use a lot of memory but together - well, clearly it all adds up.

To quickly see which programs are eating up most of your real memory - in the Activity Moniter click on the Real Memory column heading so that the little triangular arrow is pointing downward. This will sort your list from highest to lowest. The first few lines will be your real memory hogs.

The first thing I did was completely quit Firefox. Then I restarted it with only a few open windows.

I then eliminated many of my login items. Did you know that many programs invite themselves to start up automatically when you start your computer? These take up memory without you even realizing.

Luckily, this solved my problem -for the time being. Installing more memory is something that I will need to consider if I cannot adjust my computing habits to fit within the memory that I currently have.

Too Little Available Hard Drive Space

This is another culprit for a Mac running slow . To see how much hard drive space you have available just launch a Finder window. In the bottom gray stripe - it will tell you how much space is available.

If you are nearing your disk capacity - then consider deleting programs that you no longer need. Also, arichive files you no longer use onto an external drive or DVD. If you just can't free up anymore space - consider replacing your drive with a bigger one.

Repair Disk Permissions

In Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility you can repair disk permissions on a Mac. I know there is a lot of technical lingo for what this does - but for me, what it does is not as important and the results - a faster, more efficient Mac computer.

I will often run this from time to time just to keep things running smoothly.

For a Mac running slow - these three things are essential for diagnosis.

Tell Us How You Fixed Your Slow Mac

Please do share your story - it could help someone else solve their problems (at least in the computer sense). Use the space here to tell us about your Mac running slow and how you fixed it. If you haven't been able to solve the problem - then tell us about it too. Maybe one of our readers can offer up some good advice.

Running Windows?

If you are using a Windows machine, I found this great article with free tips on speeding up your slow computer.

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