Help - Mac on go-slow

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Help - Mac on go-slow

Hi there
I have a PowerBook G4. Lately, it's been getting quite slow with booting up and generally slow - lag for typing, lag to open new windows, lag on general responses. Any suggestions?

L

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How full is your hard drive?

Click once on your HD icon. Hold the Apple key and press "I" (as in Indigo)

Take the number listed as "used" and divide by the number listed under "capacity." Is the result more than 90% (0.90)? If so, your hard drive is *way* too full and the machine has no space to manage virtual memory.

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Hmm. The result is about 43%,

Hmm. The result is about 43%, so I shouldn't think that's the problem. I'm wondering whether I need to do some sort of a disc cleanup??

I don't use the machine for anything particularly demanding in terms of sound/graphic: I'm a writer and editor, so most use WOrd for Mac, as well some playing around on Firefox, iTunes, iPhotos and a few downloaded programmes.

Jon
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In the Energy Saver Control P

In the Energy Saver Control Panel, is it set for Reduced speed?

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Where is there an option for

Where is there an option for reduced speed in the Energy Saver panel? I see no such thing. You should give more information. What OS are you using, how much RAM do you have, and do you have anything hooked up to the computer? Have you repaired privileges recently? Go into Apple System Profiler and check your RAM. Try Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder to see what's busy on your computer. Some have mentioned here before having problems with iTunes 7 sucking up a lot of CPU. You may have something running in the background. But when I had that problem before it was bad RAM.

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Good call, Jon - the computer

Good call, Jon - the computer was indeed set to reduced speed in the Energy Saver panel. Hawaii Cruiser - on my computer, you go System Preferences > Energy Saver > Options tab (for each Power adapter and Battery), and you have to click the lock to make the prefs come out of gray so you can change them.
I have a 1.67 Ghz powerpc G4, with 512 MB DDR SDRAM running OS X 10.4.11. I check the activity monitor often, and the computer was going slow even with just Firefox running. Sure it went slowest with iTunes and Limewire running along with Firefox, but surely a machine of these specs should be able to handle those three applications running simultaneously?
Anyway, I've changed the prefs in the Energy Saver panel, and will see how it goes from here...

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Oh, I see. The reduced speed

Oh, I see. The reduced speed option is a laptop thing. No such option is even apparent in my Mini's preference pane. The option to reduce speed is to conserve battery life, I'm assuming. I've never owned a laptop.

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HC - the option is there for

HC - the option is there for both battery and power adaptor. In these days of energy crisis, I should think that power-saving options should really come as a standard option on all machines, laptop or desktop. But yes, mine is a PowerBook, so can't tell you bout other machines. Thanks all for the suggestions - great forum!

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