new imac 20" a little slow?

[stevescivic]

Love my new Imac core 2 duo. Reliable and works nicely without any issues except for when I'm running a few apps at the same time.

When I'm running itunes, photoshop CS (not optimized for mactel chips), AMSN and virex (designed for Mactel) as well as firefox it seems like my mac starts to lag. It lags enough that I occasionally I think my Mac is on the fritz.

I have 250 GB HDD
1 GB of RAM
128 Meg Vid card.

is this normal? I thought 1GB of ram was plenty for what I wanted my Imac to do.

Is it possible that its not working at its best b/c of the photoshop CS not being optimized for intel processors?

Thanks

[sursuciofla]

Yes, PS might be a big factor. Maybe you should go to prefs and optimize your setting for your type of use though. Set it for highest performance in the drop menu and change hdd setting while in there so it doesn't auto sleep and what not.

[digital john]

Is it possible that its not working at its best b/c of the photoshop CS not being optimized for intel processors?

Thanks

That was the first thing that came to my mind. If it is jus photoshop that is lagging and everything else is running normal that is likely your answer...

What you should do is when you using your machine open the activity monitor and see if you are actually running out of RAM. If you are running out of RAM then the next best thing to do is add some more...

[sursuciofla]

Bet you can't wait for CS3!

[tainice]

I use my friend's Macbook 1.83g with 2g of ram, and it lags whenever I use Adobe series of programs. Photoshop is not bad, in comparstion to InDesign...my god...I can go to sleep and come back and the thing is still working...

Anyway, to you question, IMO 1g of ram is definite not enough when you open multi-programs, especially PS and firefox, for those two tend to eat alot of memory in my experience.