Slow working Macbook Air

I just got my wife a Mac Book AIR, after my first fantastic year in the Mac world with a Mac Bookpro, and i love it. Now i thought it was time my wife got the same experience and man the Mac book air looks great, just the one for her.

its about a month old now and its not like i expected, its getting slow and sometimes its just not possible to work, so it could be nice to hear some comments, i´m new to the Apple world to so i´m not on at very technical level yet, getting there but not yet.

Its a Macbook Air i5 128 gm and i went for the 4 gb ram version to be sure it was fast enough. It runs the latest OS X 10.7.2.

The only thing its used for is browsing the WEB, FB, and work is citrix, witch we installed the Citirx app from there website, its not on the appstore, i use the same app. no problem. So there is nog real downloads, its working on the internet to cut i short really.

I installed free memory,pro, så i can se that she has almost 2 gb fee all the time so i don´t think its a memory problem.

Can it be that the Mac down´t work properly, so i need to talk to the shop or what can we do to fix the problem, would be nice with one more Mac fan in the house

How does the "getting slow" show? Beachball? Is it slow when switching applications? Maybe describe this a bit better.

To see how much memory is left you don't have to install an app. Your Mac has a program called "Activity Monitor" (I believe in your Applications folder -> Utilities) and you can display the RAM (and how much is free) as well as CPU usage. When the MBA is running so slow - could you check with Activity Monitor to see if an App uses an unusual big amount of CPU, RAM and how much RAM is free?

Hi Dekan

I just tried to get a picture with the activity monitor, thanks for that tip

Its looks like there is heavy disc activity when you switch between websites, not that you have a lot go fans open, just go from one to another, some are no problem, but others, for example a newspaper side can take up to a minute to fully load. It looks like it has a lot of disk activity just surfing different sites.

Ram remains around 1,5 to 2 GB free

Hum ... I'm wondering if there could be a problem with your SSD disk. Can you go into Applications folder -> Utilities -> Disk Utility? Click on your "Macintosh HD" and on the right side under "First Aid" click "Verify Disk Permissions". That will check if there is any errors with your permissions. If the system finds any, click "Repair".

I have had my iMac running pretty slow a while back and repairing the permissions made it run super smoothly again.

Let me (us) know how it goes

Shouldn't be much disk activity from just web browsing as that is handled (for the most part), in RAM. As posted earlier, check activity monitor while browsing to see what is causing the disk activity. I have a 13" Air that is just as fast as it was the day I got it.

Thanks again

There was like 15 things wrong, so i repaired them, seam like it helped, will monitor it the next days to se, but its staring after just 3 weeks that there could be so much wrong, or is that normal.
I mean we use it for normal sites like FB, Citrix for work and news, don't install anything our of the Appstore exempt for the Citrix app.

Thanks again, hope it works

Hm a lot of stuf not right on my MB pro, and also run the disc check on the pro, it suggested that the disc needed to be repairs from a nother disc, how do you manage to do that ?

I really haven't got any problems that i´m aware of, so talk about not knowing

Stilling said:

Thanks again

There was like 15 things wrong, so i repaired them, seam like it helped, will monitor it the next days to se, but its staring after just 3 weeks that there could be so much wrong, or is that normal.
I mean we use it for normal sites like FB, Citrix for work and news, don't install anything our of the Appstore exempt for the Citrix app.

Thanks again, hope it works

Click to expand...

Good to hear! Keep us posted! It's definitely not normal: My 24 inch mid 2008 iMac is running every day at work for some coding, Adobe CS5 work, Exchange, ... It has never been rebuilt, only upgraded to Lion. It's as fast as the first day when I got it. So something is definitely odd with your MBA - let's hope it was just the permissions

Stilling said:

Hm a lot of stuf not right on my MB pro, and also run the disc check on the pro, it suggested that the disc needed to be repairs from a nother disc, how do you manage to do that ?

I really haven't got any problems that i´m aware of, so talk about not knowing

Click to expand...

I believe what you need to do is to boot from your installation disk (or USB key of you have Lion). That way you are not actually using your drive and OSX on the computer. From the DVD you can then run the same Disk Utility and "Repair Permissions" as you do from within OSX.

I will try to repair it over the weekend, se what happens, down´t seam like i have any problem with the pro, must be something when it suggest that i repair.
There was a rather large update yesterday to 10.7.3. we run that to on bought of them, seam like there still is some problems wit the Mac book Air, better but from time to time it just stall on a website then looses up again and run normal, so nothing i can find something general so say.

We will monitor it se what happens.

Is there any chance at all that the machine in question is running ANY KIND of "anti-virus" or "MacCleaner" type software?

Mine is running bough memory sweeper and antivirus and free memory, could that result in a damage HD, on my Macbook pro ?
You have to bare over with me i have been forced to work with PC for 20 years and have just been free for one year now working with Apple products

And now the update on the Macbook Air, thanks for all your help, the end of it was that we found out we had 30 days compiled return, so we decided to return it, and got a iMac instead and Ipad2 for the road, my wife leave our home office one day a week so we think thats the way to go. maybe it isn't you really need a mouse to run "citrix reciver" if you really working with that, thats not easy, heard something about using a iPod touch for that, so i will browse the forum on that one ore you might se a post later under iPad but thats probably the only thing you need a mouse for in iPad, i use mine all the time on meetings, haven't taken my Macbook our for 6 month now.

Thanks again