All Nighter wants to learn more about "Mac".

[anotsostealth]

Hey guys. So i decided to pull an "all nighter" and really get to know my Mac.

I bought my FIRST black MackBook back in the summer of 06. I had been using PC's my whole life and well, you know the drill. Im some-what computer savy but I know theirs a big part im missing.

My stats:
2GHz Intel Core Duo
512MB

When i open the finder it says 17 items 32.05 GB available.

And so here are the problems..
-My computer seems like its always slow compared to friends macs with similar specs. Sometimes its rediculous. Like go do something else for a while and then come back....slow. I dont have any over sized programs. I don't play any games or any of that stuff. I do have got close to 5,000 pictures on iphoto, which may be the only thing out of the norm...but that shouldn't make a difference, because thats memory right? And that and RAM are separate. Ive already shut down most of my dashboard and know to close programs when im not using them. But even with just iphoto open, it takes a solid 4-5 minutes to finally load and you can't do a thing else, but wait. Ive heard of things like "free RAM" but am sketched out about stuff like that. So, what are some ways of making my Mac, well...normal??


Secondly, Im getting the "application not responding" EVERYWHERE. At least once a day with foxfire and it seems like any time i open any other app. Whats the deal? Is there some sort of "cleaner" out there?

And lastly(for now..) i have a good feeling my battery is going bad. Its the same one that came with it and the computer will just completely shut off out of nowhere at random times. Is there a way to actually check the status of my battery. Other than the little icon at the top?


Thanks so much for any help/information you can provide. I really want to learn more about this and I apologize ahead of time for any "noob" events.

 

[anotsostealth]

Oh and im currently searching the forum.

 

[Alexis]

Dowload Onyx and do a clear out of caches, permissions etc.

 

[anotsostealth]

Its saying i need Mac OS X 10.5.

So I assume I dont have that. So whats a broke college kid to do next? Any way to get around that? i.e. comparable software.

 

[gary61071]

Increasing the RAM would help considerably. I don't know about that particular model, but the max should be 2gb RAM. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

OSX 10.5 is Leopard, the current Apple OS. 10.4 is Tiger. Click on the blue apple on the upper left corner and select "About this Mac." It'll give you the specs of your machine, including the OS installed.

If you're getting that message about 10.5, then your macbook does not meet the requirements of that app or whatever you want to run.

 

[anotsostealth]

Ok. I found a later version for mine. Ive got 10.4.11. So what next?

Anybody know anything about my battery???? its super annoying. Sometimes it only last a few minutes w/o it being plugged in. I used to get the pop up warning but now i get nothing. Now i can only use it when its plugged in. And a new battery is like what? 130 bucks?

 

[baggss]

You only have 512Mb of RAM. Kick it up to 1 or 2Gb and things will get MUCH better. OSX needs at least 1Gb to run well.

 

[Zoolook]

You have the same Mac as me, and unfortunately in 2006, Apple in its infinite wisdom was still shipping MacBooks with 512MBs of RAM.

Upgrade to 2GBs and those lags you're seeing will almost completely vanish.

Your iPhoto library is not unusually large, but caching those tumbnails can use a lot of RAM. You can get 2x1GB sticks from Crucial or other places for around $60 shipped these days.

As for the Battery, again mine started doing the same thing. Buy a new one, and condition it properly.

 

[Glenners]

Bring it in to an apple store.