Laggy Apps

I just got my first macbook pro about 5 months ago so I'm still pretty new to the mac world. One problem I've been having is sometimes my apps get really laggy, most noticeably when switching between running apps.

For example, if I'm working with a Finder window and then double click on a contact's name in Adium, it will take 5 - 8 seconds just to load up the chat window so that I can start typing.

Other problems include things like the various items in the menu bar. Click on any of them typically results in around 5 seconds of "hang time" before displaying the drop-down menu.

Overall, things just seem sluggish. I've tried several different clean-up utilities such as Cocktail and Onyx but that doesn't seem to help this problem.

I have 512MB of RAM and memory usage is currently indicated as:
Wired - 113.36
Active - 261.77
Inactive - 130.81
Used - 506.70
Free - 6.43

Could all of this be caused by insufficient memory?

Thanks

tyson0016 said:

I have 512MB of RAM and memory usage is currently indicated as:
Wired - 113.36
Active - 261.77
Inactive - 130.81
Used - 506.70
Free - 6.43

Could all of this be caused by insufficient memory?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Absolutely. 1GB is highly recommended. It seems to be the sweet spot for Tiger.

One other thing that might cause this, especially if it's intermittent, is running PPC applications using Rosetta. A big culprit is Mac Office 2004. You can get a list of your applications and their type by going to System Profiler --> Software --> Applications.

I noticed a well-equipped iMac at the Apple store running slow as you described. When I looked at what was running, all of the MS Office apps were running. When I quit them, it came right back up to speed. The problem could be worse with just 512mb of RAM.

Well what do you know... turns out I had one PPC app launching at startup in the background (something to do with a proxy server that I was playing around with a couple months ago). Got rid of that I'm seeing a noticeable difference.
Thanks.