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Author
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Topic: PowerBook G4 running slow on Internet apps
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-01-2010 05:00 PM
I don't know in your case but it would be useful if you checked how much space is left on your startup drive.
If your drive gets more than 80% or 90% full the computer will start slowing down. Swapfiles and other stuff will start to bog you down.
Clear out all unused junk. Go through your prefs and application support folders and delete anything you don't use. Also delete unused printers from your Print Center. If you have more than a few unused ones it can slow you down.
Don't keep a whole lot of files/icons on your desktop. If you have too many, it can take a toll. Move them to folders and keep them in your "Documents", "Pictures", etc. folders.
Finally, if you haven't done so in a long time, run your cron scripts and do a permissions check/repair.
Doing all of these things will speed up your computer, in general, but should also speed up your browsing.
While you are at it, delete all your unused add-ons and extensions from your browser. Delete any add-ons that you don't use all the time too.
When it comes to add-ons, Firefox can easily become bloatware if you go wild with the extensions.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-02-2010 07:51 PM
http://www.applesource.com.au/how-to/soa/Quick-tip-Keep-Mac-OS-X-Desktop-clutter-free/0,2000451082,339287516,00.htm
quote:
...[K]eeping dozens or hundreds of files on the Desktop can significantly degrade performance. Not necessarily because the system is sluggish with regard to rendering the icons on the desktop and storing them in memory persistently (which may be true in some cases), but more likely because keeping an excessive number of items on the Desktop can cause the windowserver process to generate reams of logfiles, which obviously draws resources away from other system tasks.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051117154624368
quote:
The tip: Reduce the number of icons on your Desktop!
That's it. Really. No, really, try it and see. If you only reduce it by a few, you probably won't notice much of a difference, but the more you remove, the snappier it will feel (dependent on your machine, of course).
Why? Well, every icon on your Desktop is a little window, and as such, has a corresponding backing store allocation in the window server. Lots of these little windows apparently can put a strain on the window server, especially when you've got lots of other (normal) windows open as well.
Deleting prefs and support files is, admittedly, a minor help but if one is going through his computer to clear out all the trash that's built up it is worth it to take five minutes to clear out that junk too. The same thing goes for unused printers. It only takes a few minutes to get rid of that junk. While you're at the task of clearing out junk, you might as well clear out these too.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-04-2010 02:36 PM
I have a 1999 vintage iMac DV. I have replaced the hard drive twice and have maxed it out on RAM. I only replaced it a year ago but, at the time, it was still working perfectly if not a little slow. But, for its age, it is still as useful as it was new.
I also have a 2001 vintage white iBook. ("SnowBook") That computer was repaired by Apple under warranty for a faulty component on the motherboard which caused the video card to stop working. About a year after that, the hard drive died due to "click of death." At that time, I had been using that computer, almost daily for more than 5 years. Disappointed as I was, the failure was not unexpected under the circumstances. About a year ago, I came across a student at Mercyhurst who had a computer, just a year newer than mine, with a busted screen. Apparently the computer had been dropped or something. He was going to throw it out. I gave him a few bucks for it and used it as a donor machine to repair my out-of-commission computer.
Again, the computer is now working as well as it did when it was new.
My third, and current, computer is a MacPro 8-core. It's got all the latest bells and whistles. It's fast as I could ever need a computer to be. I have all three of my Macs plus my wife's PC networked via a 3Com switch I got from Mercuhurst when they had a fire sale of some of their old equipment.
All of these computers get regular maintenance. They get their hard drives cleaned out at least two or three times per year. I remove old prefs, junk apps and unused extensions. Every year or two I check and replace the hard drives if needed.
I don't see very many slow-downs on any of these computers. If I do have a problem it is something out of the ordinary. Usually, it is something I can solve in a day or so with proper research and application of mental energy.
My mother's computer is an old IBM Aptiva which is going on 12 years old. Her hard drive crapped out a little over a year ago and I was not able to get a replacement copy of Windows that would run on it. I was NOT going to pay for a new copy of Windows anyway. So, I replaced the drive, copied all her important files to the new drive and installed Ubuntu Linux. It's been running for over a year, going on two, without any major problems at all.
(I love to joke around about my mother being a Linux geek! ![[Wink]](wink.gif) )
If a computer gets regular maintenance, I see no reason why it shouldn't last 10 years or more without major problems.
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