Unhappy Switcher

I bought an iMac 23 inch (OS X 10.6.3, with 4 GB memory ) in January 2010 and in February had VMWare Fusion installed with XP Professional as the OS.

This machine is slower than the PC I was replacing. I even replaced my old Linksys wireless internet router with a new Apple Airport Extreme and I had a technician come out from where I bought the unit. The technician did some work and said it was ok. A day later it was back to being an anchor again.

I do not have a lot of programs, or pictures, i do not use file sharing sites like Limewire or Utorrent. I am extremely frustrated especially since I put out all this money for something advertised by others as better, bigger, faster.

Any suggestions? I do not want to take this unit back to the dealer in town and leave it if it can be helped.

To start I am sorry to hear of your issue MCS.
I cant give you advice on your problem being there are so many things that could be wrong. But the fist thing I would highly recommend is call apple direct 1 800 MY APPLE
there is no reason the mac is running slower then a pc if you boot into windows it should run with no issues but if you are booting into windows while running apple OS keep an open mind you are running two operating systems.
If it is your internet that is running slow try dumping your cache also go to speedtest.net and see what your internet connection is. Key thing is call apple they will hit these points and many more. I changed over many windows users to mac and I have not had a complaint like this.

Which iMac do you have? There's 20", 21.5", 24", or 27". Those are the most recent ones with Intel processors able to run OS X 10.6.3.
Are the problems you're experiencing only on the Mac side, only with WinXP, or with both?
What is slow? Internet, running applications, opening files?

Thanks for the suggestions. The Mac is slow and the Virtual PC is even slower. It is slow to access the internet, slow to open files, and the PC side is the slowest of all. I did forget to include that I have Kasperinsky Anti-virus on both operating systems.

np but please explain a bit more on what is going on as mymacrox posted it will help narrow down whats going on.
ether way good luck

So, as asked by MYmacROX...
Are the problems you're experiencing only on the Mac side, only with WinXP, or with both?
What is slow? Internet, running applications, opening files?
Also, you bought it in January, February you had VMware Fusion installed, and it is now April, so.... Was it running fine until you installed VMware in Feb?
Was it running fine with VMware and only recently it's not?
Have you run the speed test at Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test ?
Have you repaired disk permissions, and cleaned out caches?

VirtualPC? Are you sure as that is an old, old PPC program that always was useless. As difficult as it may seem coming from the PC environment, uninstall your AV software as there are no viri for OS X, and safe use of the net will ensure you do not get a trojan, not that there are many of these outside illegal download sites.

Do as suggested with Repair Permissions etc. Try running XP through BootCamp.

Nospeed I feel you on why MS on a MAC but I found myself at appoint in time having to infect my mac with ms for a program that is not running on Mac that I needed so I did it but with my new MBP I have yet to infect it lol

*You should only have anti virus on your Windows side of things.
Uninstall the anti virus from your Mac, as this is very likely the cause of your problems.

Plus 1 on the removing anti virus they will lock up your system and SLOW it way way down

And kaspersky is the worst! I had it on my PC before I went Mac and got rid of it within a week. It killed performance horribly.

On my Mac, I run VMWare for the one Windows application I still need. Because I never connect to the internet from Windows, and because I sit behind a firewall from my ISP, I run that Windows with no anti-virus protection. VMWare let me capture a snapshot of the clean, just installed system. If I ever get a virus, I whack the current image and restore to that snapshot and I have a clean, new virtual machine. I don't store anything on the virtual PC, I store on an external drive, so I don't lose anything in the whack/restore process.

Something for you to consider. And get rid of KAV, it's the absolute worst ever.

hey mcsmiley.....
Quite a bit of feedback there since your last post, and awaiting to hear back from you.
Have been no answers from you to any of the questions, or replies to any or all of the above advice, and as to whether or not this has restored things back to good for you!

mcsmiley said:

I did forget to include that I have Kasperinsky Anti-virus on both operating systems.

Click to expand...

I agree with some of the others. Your anti-virus program is most likely the cause of your slow performance. A poorly written anti-virus program can really slow down your computer among other things. The same problem happens on Windows only computers.

nospeed411 said:

Why would you spend all that coin on a Mac to run windows??? Kind seems pretty pointless.

Click to expand...

Thank You...End of Story.

Also another thing to consider - assuming when you refer to "Virtual PC" you're actually referring to VMWare because as Harryb2448 noted, "Virtual PC" is a very old PPC based product - vmware is nice BUT it does feel to be a bit of a resource hog. I honestly only use it (Fusion 3.0.x) on my Mac Pro as I found it extremely sluggish on any of my dual core Macs - plus, I don't know how you setup your VM to run, but if you told it to use 2 cores, you need to change that to 1.

You only have a dual core CPU in your Mac and if you read the Fusion docs, it talks about not setting the virtual machine to use the same quantity of "cpus" as you have cores in the system as it can kill performance of both OS (host and guest) when the VM is running (has to do with core synchronizations, I don't remember the details, but it is in the docs - but here is a quote from the FAQ on Fusion: "Multiple Virtual CPUs are recommended when you have applications that can take advantage of multiple processor cores and you have a quad-core or octo-core Mac Pro." ) Another issue with a VM is how much RAM did you assign to it? If you have 2 gigs of ram, you need to make sure that the virtual machine isn't set to use 2 gigs of ram as it will also kill performance while running (but should not affect the computer if the VM is not running)

I'd agree tho to remove Kaspersky at least from the Mac side and see what happens. You may also want to do some basic troubleshooting (see the sticky in Software section for OSX - Operating Systems) - you can also try using Onyx to help keep your machine running in top form.

OK, my main concern is with the virtual PC side. The Mac side is "OK..." but it does get "hung" up at times if I have four or five web pages or files open. The virtual PC is the absolute slowest to open and run.

I needed the virtual PC in order to access all my wife's Print Master 18 Platinum projects which were made on PC's. She is a school teacher and we have made hundreds of projects for her class use. This program also uses the internet to access their picture data base.

I thought my problem may have been related to a printer ( HP laser 1012) so I ditched it and switched to a new Brother laser. It did not resolve the issue. It takes forever for the virtual PC to open, and an equal amount of time once it is open to open my file folders. Then I have to open a project and it takes even more time.

You still haven't fully answered our question - are you using Virtual PC or are you using VMWare Fusion. They are two very different products...

^^^^^
Or any of the other questions for that matter!

best bet is call APPLE they will get all those unanswered questions lol

Did you try repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility? What exactly have you tried to troubleshoot?