Slow macbook strange behaviour

[arnondb]

Hi all.
I would appreciate your advice.
I run a (white) macbook
[specs: processor: 2.4 GHz Intel core 2 duo. memory: 2GB 1067 MHz DDR3]
The hard drive has a 320G capacity (I had it changed from the original one because the original hard drive "died") out of which about a 220 G only are in use. (Lots of free space).
OSx 10.8.3
The problems I will shortly describe happened also with the computer's original hard drive.

The computer is relatively slow, in most aspects:
Preview is very slow, almost unresponsive.
Firefox/Safari are quite slow, sometimes get unresponsive.
Even the sound and brightness buttons react slow and the animation of the sound and brightness is very slow.
Programs tend to take forever to quit (Sibelius for example).

I have repaired the permissions, verified the disk, after reading in this forum I have downloaded Onyx and "cleaned" the disk with it but to no avail.
I have even reinstalled the system two days ago and had little or no change at all.
I know that these actions are slow because my old mac (4 years older than this one), preforms them in a friction of the time it takes my mac to do them.

Do you have any recommendations for me except being patient when I use my mac?

Thanks!
Arnon

[gsahli]

Use the console utility and see if: any process is stuck using a high amount of CPU or ram, or, there are processes you think you quit but are still running.
Read logs and see if there are any repeating messages (like 5 or more times a minute).
Or, any reported hardware failures in the messages.

PS - I mis-typed - you use the Activity monitor to check CPU and memory use, you use Console to read logs!!!

[chas_m]

Running 10.8.3 in 2GB of RAM?

I think that's your problem right there.

[gsahli]

chas_m has a good point. I should have also asked you - slow compared to what? - before you upgraded to mountain lion, or compared to 3 months ago, etc?

One more troubleshooting step - create a new user, and log in to that user and try things. Is it still slow there?

[arnondb]

So, I run Onyx once more and restored a lot of the definitions to the original state.
It had somewhat helped.
The computer runs much smoother. Firefox is still slow.

chas_m has a good point. I should have also asked you - slow compared to what? - before you upgraded to mountain lion, or compared to 3 months ago, etc?

One more troubleshooting step - create a new user, and log in to that user and try things. Is it still slow there?

As for your advise to downgrade the OS to Lion (that's what I gathered from your posts), I don't remember the computer being faster before.
Maybe I should downgrade and restore all definitions to original?
Thanks.

[dtravis7]

Really 2GB Ram is a bit lean for even Lion.

[pigoo3]

Really 2GB Ram is a bit lean for even Lion.

My 2008 MacBook was a bit "pokey" when I had 2gig of ram running Lion. When I upgraded to 4gig of ram...things were much better.

- Nick

[arnondb]

So, you think that upgrading the RAM will help me get better results?

[chas_m]

Definitely. You should max out whatever the limit is on that model.