Spinning color wheel

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Not sure what else I can do.

Well, clearly something is running that is taking up system resources to the point that it is causing the wait cursor (spinning beachball) to appear. The thing to do is to find out what is running and causing that.

Try this.

Run Activity Monitor (in your Applications/Utilities folder), and
click on the "%CPU" header, and then click on the triangle in the %CPU
header so that things are ordered in that column from largest to
least. Make sure that All Processes is chosen in the drop down menu at the top of the window.

See what is running that is using the most CPU time. If it
has a really high number, this is likely to be what is causing your
slowdown.

If there is nothing apparent causing the problem, leave Activity Monitor open while you work, and during one of the
times when your Mac has slowed to a crawl or the spinning beachball is present for an extended period, switch to Activity Monitor
and see if something is using up all of your processor's time.

Let me know what you find. It may not be easy to know what it is that you are looking at when you find it. "mds" and "mdimport" are Spotlight processes. If they are what is causing the slowdown, Spotlight probably has a corrupted database. If that is the case, let me know. That's easy to fix and I will tell you how.
 
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Well, first of all, thanks so much for the help.

I was on the line with AppleCare for over an hour tonight; went through everything here and then some.

Interesting side note - I couldn't find the "com.apple..." file because my user account was hidden in Finder and Library is hidden in Lion.

Long story short, the problem could not be resolved. Since I've only had my Mac about 4/5 weeks, I opted for a full re-install. Only really had purchased iTunes files and photos were already backed up.

Good news.. mail finally works properly!

Any advice on how to NOT have this happen again?
 
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Any advice on how to NOT have this happen again?

A problem such as you described usually comes from installing outdated and/or incompatible (with your version of the Mac OS) stay-resident software. As I mentioned, the most common culprit is usually Flash (which is why Steve Jobs hated Flash), but it could be any kernel extension (to modify the behavior of the OS), startup item, or application plug-in.

The thing to do is, when you install new software, only do so one program at a time, and note if it has any adverse effects before installing anything else. That way, you always know what they last thing that you installed was, and you know what to uninstall to reverse any negative results.

Just curious...did you try what I suggested you do, using Activity Monitor? Usually that will point right to the problematic software.
 
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Yup, we looked at Activity Monitor. The only thing obvious was Safari at 100% or so when the spinning wheel was in effect. Nothing else was showing as hogging resources.

We safe booted, checked start up files, all kinds of stuff.

The MBA is my first Mac and it's only been 4/5 weeks so I'm not to upset about a full restoration.

Now. I have to play Devils Advocate. IF it was an issue with Flash (and I'm not 100% sure here), some of the blame needs to go to Apple. Chrome and Firefox have no such issues. Even my old ThinkPad on XP never had this problem (still works fine too).

Still, your other points are taken. I think it's also time to consider and external drive and regular Time Machine backups.

Actually learned some interesting "Mac Stuff" from the AppleCare guy, so that was good too.
 
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Now. I have to play Devils Advocate. IF it was an issue with Flash (and I'm not 100% sure here), some of the blame needs to go to Apple. Chrome and Firefox have no such issues.

If one is having a Flash problem, often FireFox will have the same problem also, as it uses the Flash plug-in too. Chrome won't have the same problem because it uses its own internal version of Flash. However, if you do a Google search, you will find lots of folks complaining about Flash problems with Chrome.
google chrome flash keeps crashing - Google Search

Apple can't control third-party plug-ins, and they can't control Adobe. That's why Apple has been leading the industry away from Flash and to open standards such as HTML 5. It isn't Apple's fault if Adobe makes crappy software.

Many Mac users who prefer Safari, but don't want to deal with Flash, use something like ClickToFlash to get around the problem:

ClickToFlash (free)
ClickToFlash

Your main problem clearly wasn't Flash, because you uninstalled it and updated to the latest version, yet you still had spinning beachball problems.
 
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Chrome crashing via Flash is interesting indeed - didn't know that. It's a great browser from what I've read and was very snappy when I tried it out. It does confirm how crappy Adobe software is (never liked the reader either).

Click to Flash is interesting, will give it a try.
 
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Okay, tried installing ClickToFlash only to find out Safari 5.1 doesn't support Webkit Plugins.

The site says to try out Marc Hoyois' ClickToPlugin.

I'm just not clear though, no the new page theres
ClickToPlugin 2.5.3
and
ClickToFlash 2.5.3

So should I instal the first (ClickToPlugin) then the second (ClickToFlash 2.5.3) or just the second only?

This may all sound ridiculous, but it's just not clear to me. And, yeah, I'd like to keep Flash off this machine for good if possible.
 
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