Format/Re-install problem

Format question

I have recently purchased a macbook which, until installing word, worked wonderfully! Word tended to slow it down a bit so i thought 'off with you then'. Probably foolishly, I decided to format and start all over again. What could be the issue...new computer, nothing on it and I would probably have to format sooner or later so why not...
I popped in my shiney new discs and clicked the 'system and bundled software' icon and off it went doing its stuff. When it got to the point of restarting, things were not quite as I expected. The system still ran slower than the original speed that was experienced on its first turn on from new. So i decided to reinstall again....this time I was presented with a grey screen. eventually the apple logo appeared...eventually the rotating gear appeared...eventually the blue screen appeared...eventually i got the desktop. By eventually, i mean a looooonnnnggggggg time! so i read a little and thought..perhaps i need to do the ,battery out and hold the power button for 5 secs reset,....did not improve...(by now you can probably see i am not having much luck and rapidly losing my cool)...I think i must have reformetted 5 or 6 times in 24 hours and things are still not as they should be.
So...am i reinstalling incorrectly...should i try it some other way....

Last night i set the reinstall in motion again and went to bed. This morning i popped in the second disk and have...what, i don't know....something to come back too. Any suggestions on what might help would be gratefully received before i attempt anoth er pointless reinstall.

Rgds

I have recently purchased a macbook which, until installing word, worked wonderfully! Word tended to slow it down a bit so i thought 'off with you then'. Probably foolishly, I decided to format and start all over again. What could be the issue...new computer, nothing on it and I would probably have to format sooner or later so why not...
I popped in my shiney new discs and clicked the 'system and bundled software' icon and off it went doing its stuff. When it got to the point of restarting, things were not quite as I expected. The system still ran slower than the original speed that was experienced on its first turn on from new. So i decided to reinstall again....this time I was presented with a grey screen. eventually the apple logo appeared...eventually the rotating gear appeared...eventually the blue screen appeared...eventually i got the desktop. By eventually, i mean a looooonnnnggggggg time! so i read a little and thought..perhaps i need to do the ,battery out and hold the power button for 5 secs reset,....did not improve...(by now you can probably see i am not having much luck and rapidly losing my cool)...I think i must have reformetted 5 or 6 times in 24 hours and things are still not as they should be.
So...am i reinstalling incorrectly...should i try it some other way....

Last night i set the reinstall in motion again and went to bed. This morning i popped in the second disk and have...what, i don't know....something to come back too. Any suggestions on what might help would be gratefully received before i attempt another pointless reinstall.

Rgds

when attempting to reinstall, open the disk utilities and erase the drive use the options to write zero's accros the drive. once this has completed start the install and use the install options and make sure to erase the disk. See if that does the trick.

I think your problem is that you are expecting immediate performance out of the machine after a reinstall. OS X doesn't work that way. If you do a clean install, after the install completes, it takes a few reboots before the machine optimizes itself. In addition, every time you install a major software update, you can expect slower boot times until the machine optimizes itself.

Here's what I would do at this point. STOP reinstalling - this is not a Windows machine, after all. Reinstalling the OS is usually not necessary. Run Software Updates and let it do its thing. When finished, click on Spotlight and make sure it's finished indexing. Then, restart the machine and let it fully boot (it may take some time). Then, reboot it again - you'll see that the boot times are faster. By the third reboot, things should return to normal.

Getting somewhere!

I did the UPDATES route but found that, without the install disk 1 inserted, the OS fails to boot. I was presented with a ? folder.
I then decided to format completely and with the zeros option. Once I had reinstalled again I was presented with what I remember from my initial turning on a few days ago. So....fingers crossed...it might be OK. I left it late last night and will know for sure when I turn it on this evening after work!

Ah....better...blisteringly fast again.

BTW, Word was slow because it is not an Intel Native App, it was running under emulation. You should have just uninstalled Word and been done with it. No need to reformat, this isn't Windows!