Went from Tiger to Snow Leopard and now things are slow..

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So I bought this horribly old Macbook, one of those during Tiger.
I started it, my girlfriend jumped it while I was looking for a cable and cheered over being able to play Farmville and Treasure Isle (Flash games) at the same time without it being slow and yadi yadi Mac was the best and so forth.

Truth to be told I was a bit impressed myself that it handled two terrible games with even worse code so well...

Anyways - Got a Snow Leopard disk, wiped the entire thing and installed it instead.
Today she comes back to play 'so smoooth' and... It's not anymore.
It's again rather slow, quite like on any PC...

Things I can see being at fault here: Snow Leopard eats alot more resources than Tiger, but then other things should be slowed down too...
Safari was updated and is now slower - In which case how do I downgrade?
Or flash got updated and apparently got worse - In which case how do I downgrade
Or those games changed code for no particular reason, but then that'd transfer to getting even worse on a PC....
Or lastly - I've installed something that's killing the computer, but the activity monitor didn't show anything abnormal - I only got Echofon and Microsofts MSN Messenger running..
EDit: Or does the Macbook do this silly thing where it slows down if it gets warm and I just overuse it?

What's the deal here and how do I get back to that smooth soft and silky experience?
 

chscag

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Going from Tiger to Snow Leopard is a good leap. You didn't mention how much memory is installed, or how much hard drive space is left. Both are important as too little memory or too little disk space can cause slow downs.

Regards.
 
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My captcha is "Fanatical Knowledge", cute.

Anyways, 2gb ram, 60gb harddrive, partitioned it into 50/10, there's 30 left on the big one (The 10 is empty)
Activity monitor shows 1,73gb ram used... Bit much isn't it?
The processes in total don't even reach above 600mb tho..
 

chscag

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Snow Leopard should run well with 2 GB of memory. However, you need to find out what's eating your memory since your activity monitor shows 1.73 GB of memory is being used. Look for start up items that may be running in the background. As far as the hard drive is concerned, you have enough space for virtual memory so that shouldn't be a problem. But why the 10 GB partition if it's not being used?

Regards.
 
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I rebooted and it's now down to 1gb ram used, with Safari open, sounds about right, no?
However it's still the same result.. :/

10gb, it's called (NaughtyCensoredWordButStillRemove)Fixer ;)

Also - mods, please don't remove things from my post that are unrelated - So, *again* the Safari Flash consumes a good +50% of the processor...
Can I downgrade in some way?
 

chscag

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Well, then you have other issues that are causing the slow downs and memory usage. Like I said above, you need to track down what's causing it.

And - I edited out your reference to the "name" of your partition. This a family forum so please keep it that way.

Regards.
 
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I know- but you nicked the last part too ;)

Anyways - How do I track down whatever I'm tracking down...?
 
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Things I can see being at fault here: Snow Leopard eats alot more resources than Tiger, but then other things should be slowed down too...

Or flash got updated and apparently got worse - In which case how do I downgrade
Is it just the games that are slow or is the whole computer slow too? What is your Intel processor speed? You said others things are not slow also so I take that as just a few things are slow.

If that is the case then Snow Leopard does update you to the more recent versions of Flash. The older versions of Flash aren't as bad as the recent versions and are tolerable on slower Macs. I don't know where to get older versions of Flash so I can't help you there. To use the recent versions of Flash smoothly you need a fairly recent fast computer because Flash isn't that great on Mac which is why there is so much tension between Apple and Adobe if you haven't been paying attention to the news.

Also Tiger does require less resources because it only needs 256 MB RAM and a PowerPC G3 processor at the minimum. Although if you are saying that only a few things are slow then it could be other problems. If your computer came with the OS Tiger discs then try reinstalling Tiger and see if that helps. If you have all your data backed up then it will only cost you your time to test this out.
 

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So I bought this horribly old Macbook, one of those during Tiger.

I'm sorry...but I have to disagree with the assessment that a MacBook that shipped with Tiger is "horribly" old.

You never gave us your MacBooks processor speed...but I have a 2.33ghz MacBook Pro with 2 gig of ram (that was initially released in 2006). It shipped with "Tiger"...and it's a fantastic laptop. It's very speedy...and has never failed to perform any task that I have thrown at it.:)

I suspect that your MacBook either has something seriously wrong with it, and/or you shouldn't just use the two internet based games "Farmville and Treasure Isle" to access a computers performance. Especially since I know that "Farmville" and "Treasure Isle are internet based games...and their performance can be effected as much or more by a computers internet connection than the computers hardware & OS specifications!

FYI...the upgrade to Snow Leopard is supposed to improve performance & reduce the OS "footprint" of all Intel based Macintosh computers.

- Nick
 
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Is it just the games that are slow or is the whole computer slow too? What is your Intel processor speed? You said others things are not slow also so I take that as just a few things are slow.

If that is the case then Snow Leopard does update you to the more recent versions of Flash. The older versions of Flash aren't as bad as the recent versions and are tolerable on slower Macs. I don't know where to get older versions of Flash so I can't help you there. To use the recent versions of Flash smoothly you need a fairly recent fast computer because Flash isn't that great on Mac which is why there is so much tension between Apple and Adobe if you haven't been paying attention to the news.

Also Tiger does require less resources because it only needs 256 MB RAM and a PowerPC G3 processor at the minimum. Although if you are saying that only a few things are slow then it could be other problems. If your computer came with the OS Tiger discs then try reinstalling Tiger and see if that helps. If you have all your data backed up then it will only cost you your time to test this out.

Err, it's the 1,83 processor.
No no, everything is running great - except for those two flash games.
And it struck me as an oddity that they're only affected, but if it is as you say, the new flash is a bit heavier, then it should be fairly safe to assume it to be the main cause.

Didn't want to rule anyting out before hearing other opinions.
I'll go look for a downgrade somewhere.

Sadly I don't have the Tiger disk, as it's a used MacBook..
I can't imagine it being the memory however as the most obvious reason, according to the activity scanner, is the processor taking a hit..

I'll find a downgrade and see what happens!


edit: pigoo3 - In terms of Macbooks, it's horribly old as it's 4 years old.
It actually doesn't get older than this one..

And I agree - it is speedy. Just not those two things. Anymore, but it was before.

However I think it's a big, and faulty, assumption to think it's something seriously wrong with the hardware. And I'm fairly sure I haven't stated a word about the general performance of my MacBook at any point so far, but thanks for the accusation.
 
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No no, everything is running great - except for those two flash games.
And it struck me as an oddity that they're only affected, but if it is as you say, the new flash is a bit heavier, then it should be fairly safe to assume it to be the main cause.
So it does sound like it's a Flash performance issue. I don't know if older versions of Flash work in Snow Leopard. You can also try the new beta version of Flash and people have reported that it's a little better. I haven't tried it myself so I can't give an opinion either way. I try to use as little Flash as I can.
 
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Not a fan myself either, but I can't stop the lady from doing what she wants.
Turned out it wasn't flash either, so that leaves Snow Leopard, which should be better than Tiger. Or Safari itself- Which I, surprisingly, can't downgrade because I don't have Tiger..

I'll check out the new flash tho

Edit: Cheers EndlessMac, that did wonders actually. :)
The difference is so notable it's almost just silly.
Now there's the speedy little bugger of a Mac I fell in love with last week. :D
 

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