Performance / memory problem?

Hi,
This is my first posting, so if I need to supply any additional info, please do get back to me.
I recently got an imac 2.4, 1 gb memory, running os 10.5.6, and for some unknown reason, I have been unable to view sites like ebay / facebook , etc. On looking at the activity monitor I seem to be having Mbs of page ins, and often almost run out of 'real' memory, even when onlu running safari or firefox and not much else! The CPU is just 'ticking over'!

Thinking it could have been been my router, I've upgraded the firmware. I have also cleared out the cache / history etc, still no change. I have turned the machine off for an hour, still no luck!

I have therefore ordered some additional memory, but feel that something else must be going on?

Any assistance would be much appreciated,

Hmm.. 1 GB should be plenty for running those programs. Is the system generally running slow or are you just having problems viewing a few web sites? It could be completely unrelated to your hardware and may be a problem with your network settings.

By "ticking over" I assume you mean that a large amount of your processor is being used for something. This is unrelated to memory. Open up a Terminal window and enter "top". You will see a list of all processes running on your system. Immediately to the right of the process name is a section labeled %cpu. Are any of them abnormally high?

Welcome to Mac Forums!

These days, 1 GB is a bit on the small side, although I agree it should be enough.

When you say that you can't view these sites, is it just that they are slow to view, or simply cannot be viewed at all?

Are you running any anti virus software? Norton in particular is notorious for blocking content.

When you say the CPU is just "ticking over" I assume you mean that it is idling - just a percent or two?

I would check out all of your startup items and make sure that you are not loading a LOT of stuff that leaves you with so little real memory that memory thrashing is occurring. In general, are you aware that you are running a lot of other stuff at the same time?

If you do a clean reboot and start no applications except Safari (or whatever browser you are using) do you get the same "can't view the site" behavior?