Strange Safari slowdown

I have an odd, but not too serious, issue with Safari - 1.2.4 (v125.12). Often, once it gets to a web site it appears to download it rather quickly and appears to finish. Then a few seconds later (maybe 4 or 5), the old beachball starts spinning, does this for maybe 5 to 10 seconds (during which Safari is locked up), and then stops and all is right with the Safari world. I haven't noticed any particular pattern having to do with certain web sites, whether I have tabs open, or anything else I can pin it to.

I'm on a broadband (cable) connection so downloads are quite fast. My computer, however, isn't. Pismo PowerBook, 400 MHz, 320 MB ram. Running latest version of X (10.3.8). I know it would seem I may be overwhelming my old PowerBook, but it's the fact that Safari seems to FINISH loading the page first, and THEN suddenly seems to get "preoccupied" for a few seconds. Any ideas??

Thanks

try resetting safari. Menu Bar -> Safari -> Reset Safari. This empties cache and clears history. Might work... i don't know. If that dosent work, try deleting safari, and then downlaoding it again from the downloads section of apple.com http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/safari.html . If that doesnt work, then you might want to try another browser...

There's also the 'usual' suspects... you could first try repairing permissions and then more specifically try deleting the .plist. I think deleting the .plist from safari will do away with most of your user settings, so I would try that as one of your last resourts (just short of reinstalling the entire program.)

-Chris

Thanks. I was about to reset Safari until finding out, via the warning box, that besides clearing the cache, history, cookies, etc. it will also clear usernames, passwords, and other auto-fill text. So I didn't go there - especially since the problem is more a nuisance than anything else. I'll try removing the .plist (although I won't completely get rid of it - just in case).

Thanks again

it doesnt matter if you get rid of it though, it will re create itself, just keep it if you want your settings back to how u had it b4 u deleted the .plst