newbie 2010 macbook beachball slowdowns help!

Hi all,

Had my MB for around a month and this is the first problem I could really use some help with.

I use my MB for web browsing and typically have just safari running with 2-3 tabs. The following problem happened a few times before but is now happening everyday and i dont understand why.

When I'm browsing, all a sudden the computer will lock up and freeze, safari stops responding, i get a spinning beachball cursor ad have to wait 3- minutes for the computer to un-freeze itself. This happens on different websites. I am running the latest software and only have adblock extension installed.

The only thing i installed recently was flip4mac (and silverlight which i promptly removed, thanks MS )

The computer says slow for a while afterwards or until restart. I can see this as when i access the dashboard there is a long delay (1 minute?) between the temperature/clock numbers appearing. Normally this is instant.

I dont understand whats going on! Am i running out of memory? I attach a copy of system monitor taken a couple of minutes after the last slow down. is 100 GB VM normal?

This problem is really frustrating as I switch to Mac to get away from random slowdowns/crashes. Why isnt my mac "just working"?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I removed flip4mac and it happened again so i dont think its that. I managed to get a screenshot of system monitor during the freeze.

My first question is, exactly what pages do you have open in Safari?
Downloading multiple videos simultaneously maybe and running out of memory?

I am typically averaging 10-12 tabs open at a time and don't believe I've ever seen Safari over about 200-250MB real memory usage, much less sitting where one of your screen shots indicates 1.2 GB.

It's def not Flip4Mac or Silverlight (which you'll need if you want to watch Netflix).

(and am assuming you only have this occur while browsing?)

no im not watching video or anything intensive like that - it happens with just 1 tab open. It did happen on the Tesco website here - can someone try clicking on "iphones" on the left hand menu abd see what happens? I had another lock up

This only occurs when browsing and is clearly a safari problem? Can anyone help or do i need to book an appointment with a genius?

Thanks

can anyone help pls? this is really killing my mac experience!

I'd try two things.

Try downloading and installing the combo update for 10.6.4 - here.

Next I'd try a fresh install of Safari. Before you do this, download and install Firefox, Opera or Chrome - your choice - open it up and make sure it's working.
Next download the latest version of Safari.
Quit Safari - In Finder - drag Safari it to the trash.
Also in Finder - go to Users / Your User / Library / Preferences and move any com.Apple.Safari.XXX files to the trash.
Now install your new download of Safari.

After you have Safari re-installed and running, you can empty the trash.